RWBY: Team LEGN
by Phoenix7926
Summary: After the incident with Team RWBY at the docks, Roman Torchwick begins to plot an attack on Beacon Academy. What he doesn't expect is the school to be defended by one of the strongest teams of hunters to ever live.
1. Chapter 1: A Foiled Plan

**Disclaimer: I do not own RWBY or any characters involved in the world of RWBY. They belong to Monty Oum and RoosterTeeth. I only own my characters and the story I am creating (which also has nothing to do with the proper RWBY storyline).**

* * *

**Lupis**

He felt the vile taste of Grimm blood on his lips, but continued to hack his way through the dark forces surrounding his team. They had been sent out to aid a group of Huntsmen who had discovered an insanely large pack of Grimm that were nesting in a clearing hidden between two large mountains. The size of the pack worried them, as nobody had even seen such a large force of Grimm before. They had been battling with the monsters since sundown, and he could already see a sliver of sunshine on the horizon, indicating how long they had been fighting for.

He swung his two blades around, cutting through flesh, bone and armour. Backflipping over a mighty swing from an Ursa Major. As soon as he landed, Lupis felt blood trickling out of his nose. He slit the Ursas throat with Hesperus and Lucifer, spilling the beasts blood over the dead grass. He launched himself off of its head, grabbing hold of a Deathstalkers tail, and slowly cutting through the deadly tip of the beast.

The Deathstalker swung its tail around and Lupis lost his grip. He was sent across the heads of several Beowolves, but corrected himself midair and landed with both feet on the face armour of yet another Ursa Major. Backflipping off of the beast head just as it raised its paws to slap him off, he landed nimbly behind the monster, watching it crack it's own armour.

Spinning around, he blocked the attacks of two Beowolves, cutting off their hands before leaping upwards and spinning in a circle, slashing at their necks. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the group of Huntsmen he and his team had come to aid in the midst of a large group of Deathstalkers and Ursa.

Quickly glancing down, he checked his teammates aura levels on his scroll, which was strapped to the underside of his forearm. None of them had taken significant damage yet, but if they continued to fight for any longer, they would become tired and make mistakes.

A Nevermore swooped low across the battlefield, raking its sharp talons across the ground, hoping to catch him off guard. Lupis leapt upwards and stuck himself to the leg of the bird by stabbing both of his blades deep into the flesh of the Grimm.

The Nevermore let out a loud shriek as Lupis observed the battlefield, looking for the rest of his allies. The most immediate person he saw was Eric. Eric was a dust user, and relied only on knowledge of dust abilities in combat. Large explosions of ice, fire and lightning were focused near the edge of the clearing. He stood upon a rock, high above the rest of the Grimm and fired his spells into the teeming mass of black creatures.

Garris was near the centre of the Grimm, punching his way through packs of Beowolves and Ursa, sending them flying or leaving them dead on the ground with Unguis. Whenever he was too busy to block an attack, he would phase through the arms or the jaws of the beasts, and unphasing when the moment was right, quickly dispatching the surprised Grimm.

Lupis could only guess that Nathan was the one darting through the battlefield, causing Grimm to fall over dead or severely maimed with his double-sided blade Telfer. While he was less graceful than Lupis and Garris, Nathan could still get the job done, and would quickly mow through ten Grimm in less than five seconds.

Lupis returned his gaze to the Nevermore he was riding, which had begun to climb higher into the air. Pulling Lucifer out of the Nevermores leg, he flicked the blade behind him, and the hardened steel broke apart and the blade became a long, and flexible whip.

Lupis flicked his wrist upwards and the end of the whip wrapped itself around the neck of the Nevermore. Lupis pulled himself upwards and he soared upwards, landing between the Nevermores wings. His whip unravelled itself from the Nevermores throat and with another flick of the wrist, morphed back into its sword form.

The Nevermore began spiralling around as it continued to rise upwards in altitude. Lupis plunged his swords into the back of the beast and held on as the wind tried to pull him off of the creature. After a few moments, the Nevermore stopped spinning and Lupis pulled his swords out. He began slashing at the flesh covered by the beasts feathers, drawing blood that splashed across his face and clothes. When he finally reached the beasts head, he forward-flipped in the air and spun 180° in the air, landing on the beasts beak. He lunged forwards, stabbing both blades deep into the Nevermores eyes, blinding it.

The Grimm shrieked loudly and bucked its head up, throwing Lupis into the air. He twisted in the air and flicked his hand, transforming the blade in his left hand into a whip and once he was in range, flicked it towards the tail of a nearby Deathstalker tail, safely rolling across the ground from the momentum after swinging, pulling the tail against the ground.

Once landed, he pulled tightly on his whip, ripping the poisonous tip off of the end of the Deathstalkers tail, which shrieked in pain from the attack. Running forwards, Lupis stabbed upwards into the belly of the Grimm with his blade, his whip trailing behind him. Rolling away before he could be stuck beneath the beast, he found himself next to Garris.

'Hey there Lupis,' Garris grunted as he blocked attacks with his Unguis, jabbing back at any monsters that he could reach. The gauntlets around his wrists were bloody, as were the blades that were attached to them. 'Drinks are on you when we get out of this!'

'Focus on getting out of here first, then I'll buy you whatever the hell you want!' Lupis shouted back, ducking and weaving around attacks, whilst slashing off limbs of the hundreds of Beowolves that surrounded them.

Garris crossed his arms and shifted his Unguis into shields, opening his mouth to ask something to Lupis, before being cut off.

'Within reason that is Garris!'

Garris closed his mouth and nodded. His leader knew him too well. Breaking the shield formation of his gauntlets, he returned to darting around in a small area, landing critical punches with the sharp blades around his fists into the necks, chests and faces of the monsters that surrounded them.

The battle continued to carry on, even after the sun had risen. Garris and Lupis had both separated by then, due to a large wave of Ursa that had pushed their way through the Beowolves. But the enemy horde was thinning out, and Lupis was starting to be able to see large gaps between the beasts now.

But the battle did not end the way he wanted. As Lupis wrapped his whips around an Ursas neck, and yanked backwards, ripping the beasts head off, he heard a loud scream and the scroll under his arm started beeping loudly. Looking down, Lupis saw that Eric's aura had dropped completely, and that there was no colour in the bar, indicating that his aura had been completely spent.

Spinning around, Lupis saw Eric suspended in the air, the tip of a Deathstalkers tail sticking through his stomach. The beast flung Eric to the side, where he hit the side of a tree, and fell to the ground and did not move.

Lupis tapped his scroll and shouted and order to the rest of the team, 'Eric is down! To position! I repeat, Eric is down!' All three of the remaining members of Team LEGN made their way to the edge of the clearing to where the Deathstalker that took out Eric was slowly creeping its way to his immobile body. The three of them quickly took the beast down together, and Lupis kneeled by Eric's prone body.

The Huntsmen gathered to their position and held back the remainding Grimm whilst Lupis called to their shuttle pilot who was in a town, ten miles away from them.

'Phoenix Five do you copy? We have a downed member, we need an evac now!'

A response was instant, with their pilot informing Lupis he was on his way.

Eric slowly opened his eyes, and tried to say something, but only blood came pouring out of his mouth.

'Stay still Eric and conserve your energy. We're getting you out of here!'

* * *

**Roman**

The night was still young. The stars were shining brightly in the sky, and the fractured moon glowed brightly in the darkness. Roman walked towards a large warehouse, a small briefcase in his hand. He sucked on his cigar before taking it out of his mouth and throwing it aside.

Roman opened the door to the building and shuffled inside, making his way through the dark aisles, his bright green eyes observing the darkness, looking for anybody who could possibly be hiding inside. He eventually reached a small, basic table and set the briefcase on its surface, sighing loudly.

_Freaking kids,_ he thought to himself. _They just had to turn up and ruin the entire operation!_

Roman shook his head, waving his orange fringe across his face, his black bowler hat unmoving, as if glued to his head. Unexpectedly, a gentle, but annoyed voice spoke from behind him.

'How very disappointing Roman,' the voice said.

'Woah!' Roman yelped, spinning around to see who had snuck up on him. Before him was his partner, Cinder Fall. Beside her were two dark shadows, which Roman could only see due to the light coming in from the street outside.

Roman laughed nervously, noticing a look of disappointment on Cinder's face. 'I wasn't expecting to see you guys so soon.'

'We were expecting more from you Roman,' Cinder replied curtly, unfolding her arms from across her chest, taking a slow step forward.

Roman laughed again nervously, trying to take a step back, but was flush against the table behind him.

'Listen, you were the ones who suggested working with those stupid mutts from the White Fang!'

'And you will continue to do so,' Cinder stated, raising her hand and ignited it. Both her and the two people standing behind her began walking towards Roman now.

Roman gulped and gripped the edge of the desk tightly as Cinder's eyes began to glow a bright orange. Cinder continued to walk closer to Roman, until he could feel the heat from the flame in her hand against his face.

'All that we ask for is a little cooperation. Unfortunately….' Cinder trailed off, staring menacingly into Roman's eyes. 'It seems we may need to apply some… pressure, to draw out that cooperation.'

In a flash, the two shadows standing behind Cinder had taken a hold of one of Roman's arms each and had lifted him onto the table, laying him flat on the surface.

'Woah, woah, wait guys! We don't need to do this!' Roman begged.

Cinder continued to walk closer to him, bringing her hand closer to his face.

'Unfortunately Roman, it seems like this is the best way for me to get through with you,' Cinder said as she placed her fiery hand against his face.

Roman's scream rang through the night, but was not heard by anybody.

* * *

**So just a little heads up, but this is my first Fanfiction writing ever. I have considered doing something like this for a while now, but I have never gotten around to doing anything. If there is anybody reading this, thanks for reading through the first chapter, and I would be extremely grateful if you could leave a review so I can help to improve my writing capabilities.**

**I will release chapters a week later at the most.**

**Thanks again, Phoenix**


	2. Chapter 2: Arrival Home

**I realise that this chapter is a bit later than a week, however I've been really busy with moving to Europe at the moment. I'll make it up and upload three more chapters super fast for everyone.**

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**Ruby**

A loud shrieking sound filled the air from outside Beacon Academy, waking the young leader of team RWBY. Opening her silver eyes, Ruby yawned loudly and looked around confusedly in the darkness of the early morning to see what had woken her.

Quickly tapping the screen of her scroll she checked the time. It was 3am.

_What woke me up so early?_ Ruby wondered to herself as she silently slipped off of her bed and landed quietly on the floor with a soft thud.

Opening the dark red curtains of Team RWBY's dorm room, she took a quick peak out of the window and across the courtyard of Beacon Academy.

Near the far end of the academy, by the landing pad was a small air carrier, which had landed in the closest space to the school. A group of three men poured out of the back of the carrier, two of them were both slim looking from where Ruby was, and the third looked very bulky around the torso.

Ruby continued to watch the figures as they came closer to the front of the school before realising that the figure who she thought was bigger than the other two, was actually carrying a fourth man in his arms.

Ruby was able to see that they were rushing to get inside the academy, and just before they reached the front door, Ruby realised that the man being carried had a gaping hole through his stomach, and there was blood all over him, and the person carrying him.

'What are you doing up Ruby?' asked a soft voice, which made Ruby jump.

Turning around, Ruby saw that Blake was staring at her with her bright, amber coloured eyes through the darkness with an inquisitive look.

'There are some people that just arrived in a carrier. One of them looked really badly hurt,' Ruby said, looking out the window again to try and catch another glimpse of the men, but they had already made their way inside.

'I'm sure that the Infirmary will be able to take care of him,' Blake said, closing her eyes again and burying her face deeper into her pillow. 'You should get back to sleep, we have that Combat Assessment for Professor Port tomorrow.'

'Yeah,' Ruby acknowledge, quietly climbing back up to her bed, trying desperately not to wake up Weiss who was still silently sleeping below her. When Ruby was back underneath the covers on her bed, she closed her eyes and quickly fell asleep, trying to forget about the man with the blood all of him.

* * *

**Lupis**

Nathan and Garris quickly opened the doors to the Infirmary and Lupis rushed inside, doing his best to keep Eric focused on him. Nurses quickly came rushing out of their office and told Lupis to place Eric on one of the empty beds.

Gently lowering Eric on the closest bed, Lupis stood back as the nurses gathered around Eric, checking his condition with medical equipment.

'Heart rate is extremely slow, blood levels are very low as well,' one nurse said after hooking Eric up to a heart rate monitor.

'Aura levels are completely gone, we need to prep him for surgery immediately,' another nurse said, indicating towards the monitor whilst inspecting and cleaning the wound.

'There isn't anything you can do to help us here,' the other nurse said, ushering them out of the way as they started wheeling Eric into the surgery room. 'We'll send you a message when we have finished the surgery and you can come see him, but it would probably be best that you see Professor Ozpin as soon as you have cleaned yourselves up a bit.'

The three students could do nothing but stand back as they watched their friend be wheeled away, his face unnaturally pale. Once the surgery doors swung shut, the three of them turned away and left the Infirmary, heading back to their dorm room.

* * *

Lupis let the warm water of the shower run across the top of his head and along his back. Supported by his two arms against the wall of the shower he stood still under the stream of water, and slowly banged his head gently against the wall so not to wake up any other students.

No matter how much training you get, you can never be prepared for moments where a teammate comes so close to death, and you can do nothing but blame yourself for what happened. Being the team leader, it was his responsibility to keep the rest of his teammates safe, and he had failed that when Eric took the hit from the Deathstalker.

After a few more minutes of letting anger at himself run through him, he turned off the water flow and stepped out of the shower. The steam hung in the air like fog in the early morning, and Lupis quickly dried himself off with a black towel on the rack.

He dressed himself in a fresh pair of his clothes as the other one was still being washed of all the blood that was left on it. When he left the restroom, he found the rest of his team waiting for him on their beds, heads in hands.

'Come on guys, we better go talk to Ozpin about this,' Lupis said, trying to sound upbeat but failing miserably.

Both Garris and Nathan sensed the guilt in his voice, but said nothing about it. It was his issue to deal with, even though they were his teammates, they could only help with so many issues.

* * *

**Ozpin**

He waited calmly behind his desk, waiting for the members of LEGN to arrive and explain to him what had happened. He already knew about the unfortunate fate of Eric Ibson, but was more curious in the events that had taken place over the last two months while he had sent the team away for their assignment.

When Ozpin took a sip of his coffee from his mug, there was a light knock on his office door. He put down his cup on the desk and clearly said, 'Come in.'

The door opened and he examined the three students as they entered. He assumed that they had cleaned themselves up before coming to see him, as they were all freshly shaven, and their clothes were free of any blood stains or rips.

'Please take a seat,' he said calmly, gesturing towards the three chairs that were laid out on the other side of his desk.

Lupis sat in the chair directly infront of Ozpin, whilst Nathan sat to his left and Garris on his right.

Nobody said anything for a moment while Ozpin continued to examine them from over his glasses whilst taking another drink from his coffee. When he put the mug back down on the desk he began to speak to them.

'Lupis, tell me what took you so long to arrive back at Beacon. We have not heard anything from you in such a long time. I sent you out two months ago now. Why have you all only just returned?'

'We had to go searching for the pack again sir. The Huntsmen that we were originally there to aid didn't show in the town where we were meant to meet them. It wasn't until a week later that another group of Huntsmen turned up and informed us that the others had been killed by the pack of Grimm, but even they didn't know where the pack was because nobody gave exact coordinates to where the pack was hiding out. We spent most of the rest of the time trying to find where they all were.'

'I see, and why did you not report this back to me immediately after you learnt this?' Ozpin asked.

'Long range communications were down in the area,' Garris spoke up. 'I went to have a look at their communications tower not long after we got the news. It had been ruined by a storm a few weeks ago and the people living there still hadn't fixed it.'

'Why didn't you send the carrier back with a message?' Ozpin questioned, taking another sip from his coffee.

'We thought it would be best to keep the carrier nearby incase the Grimm attacked the town and we needed to get the citizens out in a hurry,' Lupis responded.

'Hmm,' Ozpin said. 'And what did you find when you eventually discovered the location of the Grimm?'

'It was unlike anything we've ever seen before sir,' Nathan blurted. 'There was an excessive amount of Grimm there, and that's why it took us so long to take them all down. We were only expecting a dozen or so of them, but there had to have been thousand of them there sir!'

'I do not need exaggerations here Mr Adon, I am merely looking for-'

'He isn't exaggerating sir, there actually were thousands of them there,' Lupis interrupted, bringing up a recording they had taken when scouting out the clearing that the Grimm were in.

Setting his scroll on the desk, he spun it around and pushed it towards Ozpin.

Ozpin quietly watched the recording and realised that his students were telling the truth. The clearing was not a small area and it was taken up completely with Grimm.

'This is very worrying news Mr Drake,' Ozpin said, returning the scroll to its owner. 'We definitely have never seen such movement from the Grimm like this before. I am not sure what this means, but I have theories.'

Ozpin began to think quietly to himself about what it could mean while the three students sat quietly in their seats, waiting for him to say something else.

'What of the Huntsmen that were aiding you? What happened to them?'

'They stayed at the village sir, to make sure it would not be attacked by any more Grimm. Although we took out most of them, there were still a lot of them that escaped into the woods and the mountains.' Lupis answered.

'Ok.' Ozpin curtly replied. He sat for a moment more before looking at the three again.

'You three must be tired. You should head back to your dorm and get some sleep. You have a lot of study to catch up with.'

'Yes sir,' the three of them answered simultaneously, standing and leaving together.

Ozpin watched the three of them leave the room before opening his own scroll and preparing a message for one of his contacts.

_Team has returned. A member was fatally injured. Possiblility of Grimm movements confirmed._

Closing his scroll, Ozpin leaned back on his chair, pressing his fingertips closely together, he pondered what would happen in the future.

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**Sorry if this chapter is a bit less interesting that the last, but unfortunately not everything can be based on action. Again, I would be extremely grateful for reviews to make these chapters as good as I can possibly make them.**

**Cheers, Phoenix**


	3. Chapter 3: Before Class

**As I said, I am uploading three chapters really quickly right now. I have the time seeing as I have settled into Europe really well.**

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**Pyrrha**

'All that I'm saying Pyrrha, is that after all this time, surely I should be doing better, even slightly!' Jaune pouted to his red haired partner.

'I know how you feel Jaune, but these things take time.'

'But Pyrrha, you don't really know how I feel. You have always been amazing at fighting, so you never had this problem, but I just can't seem to be any good!'

'I'm sure you'll end up being just fine. I'll help you out even more through the semester break than what I normally do, and I bet by then you'll be one of the best in the academy!'

'I'll have to hold you to that then Pyrrha,' Jaune said, pulling his scroll out of his pocket, taking a quick glance at their timetable.

'Ok, it says here that we have Grimm Studies in a few minutes with Profess-woah!'

Pyrrha could do nothing but watch as Jaune tumbled onto the floor, along with another student whom she had never seen before. She was caught for a moment, as she observed him.

He wore a dark blue buttoned up shirt. It was unbuttoned a few buttons from the collar, which was ruggedly fixed, half of it flat against his neck, the other sticking up at odd angles. The shirt had white stitch around the shoulders, down the sides of the shirt, and around the edge of the shirt where the buttons were.

Across his heart was a strange symbol that Pyrrha had never seen before. It was difficult to tell what it was, but Pyrrha could best tell that it was a bat, due to the way the edges spread out like wings, and the top stuck out like two bat ears.

Around his wrists were long, armoured gloves. Along the top of the forearm was a dark blue plate of armour that had ridges across it, suggesting that it could move around to become something else. The same emblem was sat on the top of the gloves, behind his palms.

His trousers were bright white that faded into a dark blue near the front of his thighs and his knees. The bottom of the legs were tucked into dark blue combat boots with black straps.

'Oh man,' Jaune started, looking up at the student, a sad look on his face. 'I'm so sorry man, I didn't see you, I was busy looking at my timetable and-'

'That's fine,' the other student said, lending Jaune a hand. 'We all have our days.'

'Yeah, except it's like every day with me,' Jaune replied, grabbing hold of the other students hand as he was hauled upwards. Once they were both standing again, Pyrrha took a look at the students face.

He looked much older than most of the other students that she knew at beacon. His blue hair was tousled, and fell just over the tops of his eyes, which were, like his atttire, a dark blue. A smile sat on his face, but it looked slightly forced, as if he was going through a difficult situation.

'Thanks, uhh,' Jaune started, shaking his hand before wondering what the students name was.

'Garris,' he said, shaking Jaunes hand once more before letting it go. 'Garris Daxter.'

'Jaune Arc. And, uh, this is Pyrrha Nikos,' he said, turning and indicating towards Pyrrha with his hand.

'It's a pleasure to meet you Garris,' Pyrrha said as she shook his hand.

'The pleasure is all mine Miss Nikos,' Garris said.

'What year are you in Garris? If you don't mind my asking, you just seem slightly older than any of the other students I have seen.'

'Not at all. I'm in my third year at Beacon now. I assume you are both in your first year?'

'Yeah, we are,' Jaune said quickly, looking at Pyrrha intently. 'Listen, not to be rude or anything, but Pyrrha and I both have to get to class, and we really don't want to be late.'

'Of course! Go ahead, don't let me hold you back.'

'Thanks,' Jaune said, pulling Pyrrha along. 'Seeya Garris!'

'Bye Jaune, goodbye Pyrrha!'

'Goodbye!' Pyrrha said, waving as she and Jaune started to run through the corridor of the school.

* * *

**Garris**

He shook his head as he watched Jaune and Pyrrha sprint away to their class.

'I swear that the kids who enroll here get weirder and weirder every year.'

Turning away, he started to head to his own class, advanced aura training with Proffesor Goodwitch.

As he turned a corner, he almost crashed into someone else.

'Those two would make a good couple,' said the familiar voice, making Garris smile.

'Yeah, they look like they would be awkward about it though,' Garris said, as he looked at his partner.

Lupis was wearing his usual attire. A pitch black, long sleeve shirt with a jagged blue design around his ribcage, covered by his unzipped black jacket. Fingerless gloves were still on his hands as they always were. His black boots were the exact same as Garris', as well as his trousers, but they faded from black to blue instead.

His eyes were slightly bloodshot, obviously from his lack of sleep from worrying over Eric for the last few days did nothing but add more colour to his eyes. Alongside the pale red, his eyes were a stormy grey blue, with lots of amber streaks throughout his iris.

He must not have taken as much care in his appearance, as his black hair lay flat on his head, drooping close to his eyes, in comparison to how it normally stood, spiked upwards at the fringe.

'How are you holding up Lupis? With Eric and all of that?'

Lupis sighed, and Garris could tell he was thinking of an answer.

'I still feel like it's my fault, you know? Like, I should have been more cautious, I mean, I'm his leader for Oums sake!'

'I know Lupis, but you have to let it go. No offense, but you aren't perfect, and you can't save us from everything in the world.'

Lupis sighed again, lowering his head. 'I know Garris, I guess this is just what I have to feel when I'm the team leader.'

'Don't worry about it so much,' Garris said, clapping a hand on his partners shoulder and steering him to his next class. 'Be more worried about our class with Professor Goodwitch. We haven't been here for the last two months, and I'm sure we are really far behind now.'

'I'm sure we can catch up, we always have,' Lupis said, silently walking alongside Garris.

'Hopefully, come on Lupis, let's get over there. It would be pretty bad if we were late for our first class after getting back. That isn't really how I want our reputation to go after our time away.'

Lupis looked over at Garris, a smile on his face.

'Garris, our reputation was always bad, don't try to kid yourself. I was bad as soon as you tried to hit on that girl from Team LBTY for the first semester in our first year!'

'I didn't try!' Garris exclaimed, pointing a finger at Lupis' face. 'She actually found me funny and we got kinda close for a while!'

'Uh huh. If by close you mean she took all of your Lien and made you look like a complete idiot infront of the rest of the year, then sure man, I'll agree with you.'

'She was great,' Garris said, reflecting on his time with Tris.

* * *

**I know that there is no action in this chapter either, but I can promise that the next one will be much better. I hope I described these two characters well. Once more, if you can possibly leave a review so I can make these chapters as good as I possibly can, that would be fantastic. And please do, I know there are people seeing this stuff, so I would really appreciate it.**

**Thanks, Phoenix**


	4. Chapter 4: Back in Class

**Lupis**

'Good to see you are keeping your reputations at constantly being late to class Mr Drake, Mr Daxter,' Professor Goodwitch said with a hint of annoyance as Lupis and Garris rushed through to door to the combat arena, keeping false smiles on their faces as the rest of the students watched them from their seats.

'Well, we can't change things now. Not after all this time,' Garris said, sitting down with Lupis in the two empty seats at the front of the class, while all the eyes of the class continued to stare at them.

Professor Goodwitch grunted with a mixture of disgust and possibly humour? 'Well, as I was saying to the class before the two of you decided to stumble in, we are starting a new unit this week. We are starting to look at how we can focus the power of our aura through using our own physical strength. This means that when your aura levels begin to lower, you can use your own energy to replenish it.'

'This is however, a very dangerous tactic. If you use up too much energy to restore your aura, you may end up falling unconscious.'

'I know that some of you are already familiar with the concept of having to use your own energy for other combat means that just physical combat, so this course may be easier to you,' Professor Goodwitch said, looking at Lupis and a few other students in the audience.

'Because of this,' Goodwitch continued. 'For the first lesson I will be using you select few students to demonstrate to the rest of us how to do this.'

Lupis and the other students like him moaned in protest for a moment before Professor Goodwitch lifted her crop from the side of her leg and slapped it hard against the podium at the edge of the stage.

'Enough!' she barked. 'Mr Drake and Ms Firefox, would you both be so kind as to come forth and demonstrate to us all?'

'Is this an order or a-'

'Now Mr Drake,' she said angrily, narrowing her eyes at him.

Lupis stood up with a sigh, feeling Garris give him a reassuring pat on the back.

'Good luck man!' Garris said, a false smile on his face.

'Thanks for the confidence in me,' Lupis said, vaulting up onto the stage. Looking over, he saw Tris also climing onto the stage, her bright blue eyes meeting his multi-coloured ones.

She had changed a lot in the two months that he and his team had been gone. Her long orange hair was even longer now, reaching down to just above her waist and her orange fox ears poked upwards at the top of her head.

She no longer wore her orange tank top and short skirt, but was wearing a more practical attire for combat. She bore an orange shoulder length shirt with red armour on the tops of her shoulders and along where her ribcage would be.

She still wore a skirt, however it was much longer than what she originally wore and reached just above her knees. It was a dark red colour like her shoulder armour, mixed with intricate orange designs. Short red boots reached halfway up the lower part of her legs.

Tris gave Lupis a quick smile as they both walked towards the centre of the stage. 'Good to see you back Lupis, even if you look as bad as you do right now,' indicating to his shabby appearance.

'Very funny Tris.' Lupis said, shaking her hand to show sportsmanship. 'Good luck for this.'

Tris let go of his hand and taunted to him. 'I don't need luck, it's only you that I'm fighting.'

As she walked to her side of the stage, she gave him a quick wink before turning away. Lupis followed suit, heading to his own end of the stage.

'Now I want both of you to treat this like a normal fight, however, when your aura levels begin to drop, I want you to try and use your personal energy stores to replenish it.' Professor Goodwitch said, far away from Lupis and Tris as she knew that battles between students in this class could get wild quickly.

Both Lupis and Tris nodded towards their instructor and pulled out their weapons, ready for combat. Lupis kept the blade in his right hand, Hesperus in it's blade form, whilst he flicked his wrist and converted his other blade into its whip form. Tris pulled out her own two blades, extending one of them so that the blade was the length of Lupis' whip, and the other one shorter so that it was more to the size of a dagger. Her blades gleamed with an orange light, indicating that they were fuelled by dust.

'Let the match begin!' the Professor shouted.

Lupis waited for a moment, allowing Tris to rush closer to him as he widened his stance and prepared for the upcoming onslaught of attacks. He flipped Hesperus around, so he was holding the blade backwards and brought it up across his body as Tris' longer blade slammed into his own. There was a lot of power in the strike as the orange dust that fueled her blades created a small explosion, jarring his arm. Shocked for a second, he quickly darted backwards as the shorter blade came along, barely avoiding the blade as it slashed across where his stomach previously was.

He saw Tris move to jab at him with her dagger almost immediately after her swipe, and deflected the blow with his sword, pushing it over to the side, feeling the same jarring feel as he deflected the attack.. Knowing how she fought, he pushed himself off of the floor moving into a flat spin in the air. He felt the steel of the longer blade brush against his back and once he landed, he wrapped his left arm around her right, and threw her over his shoulder, hauling her towards the floor.

What saved her was her uncanny agility due to her faunus heritage. She landed on both feet, with one hand supporting her, whilst her other was still in his grasp. She dropped down lower and flicked out her leg, sweeping his feet out from underneath him.

Letting go of her arm, Lupis fell onto his hands and rolled backwards, hearing her blades scratch against the floor where he just was. As he got back to his feet, he flicked his wrist and sent the end of his whip flying towards Tris' leg.

She blocked the attack with her sword, but the whip wrapped around her blade and with a powerful pull, he yanked the blade out of her hand and sent it skidding across the floor behind him. Cheers erupted from the audience as Tris was disarmed, but Lupis was too focused on the battle to really care.

Flicking his wrist again, the whip flew towards Tris again, who backflipped over the edge of the weapon, landing just outside of his reach. Lupis saw her crouch on the ground, and could see the muscles in her legs tensing. Prepared for her next move, he flicked his wrist again, throwing the whip into the air as he was expecting her to leap upwards to get closer to him. However she charged forwards after thrusting herself forwards, kicking off of the wooden flooring and ran shoulder first into his side, thrusting her knife towards his side.

Her shoulder connected, but he was barely able to deflect the stab with the hilt of his blade, pushing it aside, but falling backwards nonetheless. He attempted to bat her backwards with his fist, but she dodged out of the way and rolled to the side, taking a hold of her longer blade and turning around in a defensive stance, the longer blade held out front and the smaller blade held backwards behind the first blade. Lupis saw her smile as she saw the telltale sign that he had used his semblance. A small trickle of blood ran from his nose, and he quickly wiped it away with the back of his glove.

Lupis looked at her for a moment, deciding on his next course of action. Once his mind was made up, he darted forwards, his whip trailing behind him whilst his sword was held backwards. He did not bother to defend his body, instead leaving his sword pressed flat against his arm as he got closer to Tris. When he saw her take a swing at him, he dropped to his knees and used his momentum to slide under the blade. Too fast for anyone to see, he whipped his hand around and the end of his whip caught around Tris' ankle. Stabbing his blade into the floor, Lupis stopped moving and pulled hard on his whip, pulling Tris' leg out from underneath her and she sailed into the air. Jumping upwards, he slashed across her chest once with his blade before kicking her hard in the stomach, sending her flying backwards across the room. He landed nimbly on the floor, and raised his head, ready to dash forwards again, tensing his legs as he prepared to charge.

Tris shakily stood up, shocked from the pain she felt across her chest.

'If you do not mind Mr Drake, as this is a demonstration, I would prefer that you now allow Ms Firefox to replenish her aura with the tactic I have asked you to demonstrate.'

Both of them looking over, they saw their aura levels on the large screen at the back of the hall. Lupis' aura was still at 100%, but Tris' had taken a drop, and was in the yellow level due to the brutal slash that Lupis had made across her body. It had only affected her aura and had not actually cut her.

Tris looked away, closing her eyes. Before long, Lupis began to notice that her aura was slowly rising again. It didn't rise very much before Tris opened her eyes, gasping loudly. Lupis quickly flicked his whip, setting it into its sword form and sheathing both of them as Professor Goodwitch walked across to the centre of the stage, looking out to the other students.

'This students,' Professor Goodwitch started. 'Is what most of you will be like when you first attempt something like this. The amount of energy required to restore aura is astronomical, but you can learn to use less energy the more that you practice. You can begin to use less energy and restore more of your aura the more capable you become with this tactic.'

'You will be practising this for the next few months with random partners every class so that you can still keep up with regular combat training for the Vytal Tournament. Mr Drake, Ms Firefox, you are both excused for the rest of the lesson and you may watch the rest of the battle. However, I am expecting you to both be back and battling for tomorrows class.'

The sound of students moving around to find another partner was deafening and it was not long before Lupis heard Garris approaching him from behind, and clapping a hand on his shoulder. 'That was a really good fight man. You probably didn't have to hit her so hard though.'

Lupis took a quick chuckle as he saw Tris make her way over to the both of them. 'That was a good fight Lupis,' she said smiling. 'Good to finally have a worthy opponent again. I've been getting a bit bored of everyone else in the class.'

'What about me?' Garris asked, smiling towards the faunus girl.

She looked at him with a blank expression before saying, 'Nah, your stance is still too wide and your attacks are too obvious,' before walking off the stage, poking her tongue out at him.

Lupis laughed at his partner whilst Garris pouted at her comment. 'Come on Garris, we should find you someone else to work with. Someone else will need an opponent seeing as I've already had my turn.'

Garris acknowledged him, turning away silently for a moment before turning back to him with a joking look. 'Can we make sure they're good looking though?'

Lupis chuckled slightly before saying, 'I'm sure Jason still needs a partner, he looks a bit lonely over there.'

'I said good looking. I would have thought that you out of all people would be the least likely to be deaf!'

* * *

**So hopefully this chapter was slightly better. I took a few things into account and did my best to write things slightly differently. However, if there are still problems with the story, the only thing that will make it all better is reviews! Constuctive criticism is what I am really looking for, as long as it is constructive and not just criticism.**

**Thanks, P**


	5. Chapter 5: No More Lunch

**Holy fricken commando! It's been three weeks since I last updated this story! You must be thinking that I'm absolutely terrible and have the worst attention span in the universe to take so long to update this story.**

**However, I have some very good reasons for why it has taken so long. 1) My dog decided that she would chew through my internet cables and make it impossible to do anything internet wise and 2) My laptop literally set on fire -_-**

**So now that I have explained my absence, let's talk RWBY. Finally getting a laptop back, I go straight to Roosterteeth and watch those 3 episodes/chapters of RWBY, and they were freaking amazing! Always so sad when the episode ends because I just want even more!**

**Also as a side note, I have changed a few things in the previous 1-4 chapters of the story, hopefully nobody will be too supset about it, but rather be more pleased about them instead. Basically I changed two names and edited the order and what I actually wrote.**

**But enough of my dilly dallying, and lets get to what you are really here for, Chapter 5 of Team LEGN!**

* * *

**Nathan**

'So Nathan, have you written that essay for Professor Oobleck yet?'

Nathan looked at his team leader and thought of the best way to answer him. With the truth or what Lupis would prefer to hear? This was a constant dilemma for him. He had the intelligence to do most of the essays, assignments and tasks that their teachers set them, however he was always too lazy to do them. That was where Eric had normally stepped in to help, as he was much more active when it came to their homework.

'Uhh, almost,' Nathan lied, thinking to the untouched pile of paper that Oobleck had given them to write their essay on that was still at the bottom of his bag. 'I just have a little bit more to write in regards to the actions of the defenders in the battle, and then I'm pretty much done.'

The essay that had been set was in no means a simple task. The report required students to look up th events of a battle that had occurred several hundreds of years ago, in a part of Vytal that was now entirely inhabited by Grimm. The battle had taken a drastic turn near the end, when the defending force of which was part of the Atlas military, and the attacking force, a part of the Vacuo military, had been attacked by a large force of Grimm. There were only a small handful of survivors, and by the time they had made their way back to civilization, only two of them were still alive.

Not many people in Vytal knew of this battle, as it wasn't common knowledge to most people, which made it difficult to find any books that spoke of the battle and what had happened.

'Oh really?' Garris asked, a smile on his face. 'I have that bit covered, just while we're here now, can you give me a bit of help on the attack the Grimm made near the end of the battle? I had to hand the book back to the library before I was done with it, because it was in such high demand from so many students.'

'Uhm…' Nathan mumbled, averting his eyes from his teammates, who were both smiling at him mischievously. He tried to quicken his pace across the campus, trying to escape his teammates who jogged after him as they walked towards the cafeteria.

'Actually, we don't have class until an hour after the cafeteria closes,' Lupis started. 'Maybe once we've had something to eat we can all head back to our dorm room and you can show us your essay. I'm missing a bit on what caused the troops from Vale to join in on the attack and attack the Atlas forces alongside the Vacuoans.'

'Uh, yeah sure.' Nathan thought, scrolling through his mind to remember whether Professor Oobleck had said anything about Vale forces being in the battle too. Unfortunately, the past week had been a blur, and he remembered very little in regards to most of his classes that didn't require combat. That was the part that Eric had always covered to that he could pull Nathan out of the fire when he didn't listen in class.

'Yeah, I can probably help you with that. I think I wrote some of that down somewhere in my report,' Nathan replied, thinking that what Lupis had said must have been correct.

'Nathan,' Lupis said, grabbing his shoulder and pulling him to a stop. The group stopped in the middle of the courtyard and moved over to be closer to the fountain as a large group of students came rushing from the cafeteria, most of them looking as if they had soiled their pants.

Lupis looked straight at his teammate, and at such a close distance, his multi-coloured eyes became extremely intense to look at, but impossible to look away from.

'I know that this last week had been rough for you, given Eric's situation and all,' Lupis began, dropping his hand from Nathan's shoulder and letting it hang by his side. 'But just because he was your partner, it doesn't mean that you need to try and go through everything by yourself. I know that you are a bit of a dunce when it comes to being social, no offense.'

Nathan nodded, knowing that what he said was true, taking no offense at all.

'But you don't have to do everything alone. We are your teammates Garris and I. We're here to help you through things, no matter what. That's what we do. Ok?'

Nathan nodded again.

Lupis sighed silently, closing his eyes. 'Good. Tonight we'll all get together in the library after our classes and dinner and we can all work on our essays together, alright?'

'Alright,' Nathan said.

'Good. Now that you two have had your romantic moment, let's get to the cafeteria, I'm starving over here!' Garris shouted, marching off towards the large stone building, the other two teammates close behind.

However, before they could get anywhere near the building, they could her loud crashes coming from within the buildling. When they got even closer to investigate, they all jumped out of their skins as the roof exploded and they could see a student with with bright yellow hair go sailing into the sky, screaming as she went.

'What the-?' Lupis started, before he suddenly jumped sideways, a large piece of stone from the ceiling falling directly where he was previously standing, embedding itself in the ground.

Nathan and Garris both sprinted into the hall as their leader stayed back, wiping away the blood that had suddenly erupted from out of his nose. Bursting through the doors, they almost crashed into a faunus boy with a blond monkey tail, and a taller students with cyan blue hair. Nathan didn't recognise either of them and assumed that they were exchange students for the festival.

When he turned his gaze to what they were both staring at, his jaw hit the floor.

The room looked as if a tornado had come through it, with tables, benches, vending machines, food and what looked like grape juice scattered everywhere throughout the room. Most of the tables were cracked in half and left in splinters throughout the room, food was stained against the walls and sunlight streamed out of the windows in the sides of the rooms, along with the hole that was in the roof.

And then he saw the cause of all the destruction.

At the far end of the room, was a girl with orange hair and bright blue eyes. Under normal circumstances, Nathan may have thought that she would be a regular teenage girl, but this was no normal circumstance. The girl had a devilish grin on her face, and stood near a stack of cans from the broken vending machines. She had one in each hand, and was throwing them at a black haired girl with a small bow atop her head.

None of the cans hit their mark as the girl with the bow dodged and weaved her way around the cans as they exploded against the ground. Nathan noticed near the orange haired girl, that another student was picking themself up of the floor. This girl had bright red hair, just like his, but bright green eyes in comparison to his golden yellow ones. She also looked extremely familiar, to him and as he racked his brain, he recognised her as Pyrrha Nikos, the girl that graduated top of the class in Sanctum and won the regional tournament there for a record amount of times.

He had to be snapped back to reality as she slammed her hand into the floor, and lifting all of the other cans off of the floor. Once they were a decent height in the air, she stood up and shot her hand forwards, sending them all flying forwards.

The black haired girl backflipped and dodged a few of the cans, but was quickly enveloped in them all and was being pelted from all sides before being hit so hard that she was sent flying across the room. She crashed against the back wall and fell limply to the floor, sending a spray of food into the air as she landed.

Nathan looked back to the rest of the room again, hoping that it was all over and he could just sit down to eat, but realised that there was another girl standing up in front of him and Garris.

She was much shorter than most of the other students that he saw around the school, and looked much younger too. A long red cloak fell across her shoulders and down her back, and short black hair with red ends fluttered across her face as she crouched to the ground.

The next thing Nathan knew, she was gone, a gust of wind follwing her wake, and all of the debris, food and cans were pulled along with the wind. The two girls that he had seen before at the other end of the cafeteria, were being swept along with two boys that had raised themselves off of the floor.

The young looking girl reappeared at the back wall, in a dead stop, but the swirling tornado of food, plates and students crashed against it. The remaining cans exploded upin impact and left a multi-coloured mural against the grey stone of the building. The four students slowly peeled off the wall, leaving imprints of themselves amidst the colour of the soft drinks that had stained the grey stone.

As the all crashed against the floor, a loud bang erupted from behind him, Garris, the two strange looking people and Lupis. Nathan did a double take when he realised his team leader had somehow snuck behind him. Before he could ask how long he had been there, Professor Goodwitch stormed past them all, a snarl on her face, her crop in her hand.

With a flick of her wrist, everything started to fly back into place. Tables fixed themselves middair as they rolled back to where they originally sat. Benches placed themselves to be parrallel to the edges of the tables, but the spoilt food all flew back to the kitchen, presumably into the rubbish.

'Well, there goes my appetite,' Garris said with a frown on his face.

Another hole opened up in the roof and was quickly sealed up again as the blond haired girl from before came crashing into the ground. Professor Ozpin walked in behind Professor Goodwitch and began speaking to her in a soft tone.

Nathan realised his jaw was still wide open as Garris lifted his hand and manually closed it for him.

'I guess we'll just skip lunch then huh?' Lupis asked.

'Yeah, I guess so,' Nathan replied.

* * *

**Roman**

He set down the binoculars that he had been using to watch into the cafeteria of Beacon academy. Two groups of students had started a food fight whilst he was scouting out the area with some White Fang soldiers, and had become extremely interested when he realised that the two girls who had ruined his operation the last week were a part of the fight.

He hadn't realised how good at fighting they all were, and he was only watching them playing with food! A snarl on his face, he realised that the operation he had in mind would be much more difficult to carry out, especially with useless soldiers like the ones from the White Fang and the idiots he hired from Junior.

Turning his head to the side, he looked at a White Fang member that had a pair of fluffy white dog ears stickign out from underneath his hood.

'Do you have the information I asked of you?' Roman snarled at the mutt.

'Yessir,' he nodded, putting his scroll away into his pocket.

'Good,' Roman said, turning his gaze back to the building that the fight had taken place in. He lifted the binoculars back up to his eyes and peered through at the students that were now laughing together in the middle of the room.

'Unfortunately, we still have lots of work to do.'

He dropped the binoculars from his face once more and looked at the group of animals that surrounded him.

'Pack up, we're moving back to base.'

* * *

**I know that this is more of a filler than anything else, but it's the only thing that actually felt right for me to do. I don't really plan on having too many filler chapters, but unfortunately, this is what it is.**

**I wanted to get a bit of Roman back into the story again, as he is one of the more important people to the plot of my story, (even if he isn't a hero in the story), so that's why the small bit from his point of view is at the end, even if it is extremely short.**

**Next chapter will hopefully be more exciting. However I don't really want to try and make everything action, I find that more difficult to make interesting, unless that's just me over-reacting to my writing.**

**But, until next time, all I can ask is for a small review if there are any problems with the story, even if you PM it to me, something is better than nothing.**

**Cheers!**


	6. Chapter 6: Clash Between Students

**Before you say anything, yes I know I have not updated this for three weeks. It must seem like a running theme with me, not updating this for weeks upon end. I do have reasons, mainly studying for some exams and practicing for the Indoor Nationals for archery.**

**If you are reading this, thank you for continuing to read through the first few chapters and even waiting for the next one to come along too. Unless you just skip past all of this because you don't really care about what I have to say….**

**Either way, to what you really want, Chapter 6!**

* * *

**Ruby**

'Attention students,' Professor Goodwitch's voice rang throughout the cafeteria. Holograms of the Professor appeared at regular intervals throughout the hall. Most of the students lifted their heads from their food and turned their attention to the nearest hologram of Goodwitch. Some other students, mainly Cardin and the rest of his team, continued with flicking small bits of food at faunus students.

They all did their best to ignore what was going on, but they couldn't hide their faces of pure anger. Others, such as Velvet, were desperately holding back tears at the discrimination against them. Ruby could see Yang reach over to Blake to calm her down. This was when Ruby noticed that Blake had the same look on her face as the rest of the faunus students but knew that Blake could easily take on Team Cardinal by herself.

'I have very important news for you all today, which I will tell you all once Mr Winchester has finished attempting to start another food fight. I'm sure that we have all had enough of these for one semester,' Professor Goodwitch said, all of the holograms in the room staring threateningly at Team Cardinaly, knowing full well what he was really doing.

Cardin and his team looked up at the nearest hologram, snarling, but ceasing tothrow their food at the faunus students and started paying attention to the teacher.

'Thank you Mr Winchester,' Goodwitch said calmly.

'As you all know, the Vytal Tournament is approaching rapidly and I am sure that some of you are eager to begin training to be ready for the tournament. From today until the week of the tournament, teams will now have an allocated timeframe where they are permitted to use the battle stage to prepare for the team battles in the tournament. My classes will continue being based on single combat, where we will determine a select few that are allowed to participate in that part of the tournament.'

'You will find your allocated time frames on the various noticeboards across the school and if your team wishes to partake in the tournament, simply write your team name on the noticeboard in the battle arena.'

'Thank you for listening students, please make your way to your first class in a few minutes,' Goodwitch finished, the several holograms shutting down, leaving all of the students to burst out in conversation, excited over the prospect of getting to start preparing for the tournament.

Ruby was not an exception.

'YES!' Ruby shouted out loud, startling Blake who was still glaring angrily at Cardin, making her bump the bottom of the table with her knee with a loud thump.

'Finally, we're going to be getting ready for the tournament! I've been waiting so long for this! I've been thinking of ways that we can easily communicate how we want to attack to each other without letting out opponents know what we're doing. I was thinking of using codenames for different attacks, and basing the codenames off of whoever is helping out in the attack! What do you guys think of that huh?!'

'Ruby, that sounds great and I'm sure that we can definitely figure out something like that quite easily,' Weiss said, calming down her partner by patting her on the shoulder, and bringing the now standing girl back to her seat. 'But we first need to know when our time is and wait until our classes are-'

'Oh! Good point! I'll go check right now!' Ruby said excitedly before disappearing from Weiss' side in a cloud of rose petals. Weiss could see where her teammate was heading by the sheer amount of students that were suddenly blown over into each other or their food, such as Jaune, who now lifted his head up, his face completely covered in cereal. Pyrrha had her hand over her mouth, trying to hold back a laugh, whilst Nora simply burst out in laughter, pointing at Jaune's face, which only caused Pyrrha to burst out laughing too. Ren was much quieter, simply staring at Jaune with a smirk on his face.

It wasn't long before Ruby came dashing back again, repeating the same process to the students and dunking Jaune's face into his cereal once more. His team continued laughing as Jaune tried to wipe the cereal off and Runy appeared back where she was sitting once again.

'We have our time just after lunch every day. There are lots of teams that are there at the same time too.' Ruby said, her breathing completely normally even though she had just sprinted across the entire hall and back in a couple of seconds.

'What other teams?' Yang asked. 'If we're sharing with Team Juniper I'm sure we'll have a great time, but if we're there with Cardinal, I don't think me and Blake will be spending as much time practicing with you guys as we will be beating the dust out of him.'

Ruby shook her head frantically at her sister, causing the three of them to become dizzy at the speed her head was moving.

'Nope. We aren't sharing with Cardinal, but we are going to be there at the same time as Jaune's team.'

'Oh joy,' Weiss said, rolling her eyes. 'More time for that dolt to try and 'hit on me',' she said, making air quotes with her hands.

'Oh come on Weiss,' Yang said, reaching across the table to lightly punch the Ice Queen's shoudler, a light smile on her face. 'We all know that someday you will fall for it.'

Weiss' face turned a bright red and put on an angry look. 'No I will not Yang Xiao Long! What he does is innapropriate and childish! I would never 'fall' for him! Ever!'

'Sure thing Ice Queen.'

Weiss started growling at the yellow brawler, but stopped and folded her arms, her face turned away from Yang.

'Who else is there Ruby?' Weiss demanded.

'Uhh, a couple more First Year teams, Legacy and Titan. A few second years, Justice and Imperial and one Third Year team.'

'A third year team? I wouldn't have thought they would combine a senior grade team with the rest of us Junior grade teams.' Weiss said, turning to look at her leader. 'What team is that?'

* * *

**Lupis**

'Technically speaking, he is fine. His aura is just incredibly low, and no matter what we do, we can't undo what the Deathstalker venom did to it. You're just going to have to build it up again manually, training him hard and really stretching it as much as you can. I knew Eric quite well Mr Drake. The amount of times you four had been in here, I had to know all of you. That boy had one of the strongest auras that I have seen in a long time, but right now, he's but a shadow of his former self.'

'Is it really that bad?' Nathan cut in.

The doctor turned to face the red haired warrior, a sad look on his face.

'I'm afraid so Mr Adon. Your partner's aura is so weak, it would only take a few punches from a small child before it ran out. We've tried using healing crystals, aura transfusion, aura cleansing, but none of it has worked. I know that you were very far away from us, but you simply took to long to get him here. If you had gotten back half an hour quicker we may have been able to do something for him. Hell, if you were a few minutes later, we wouldn't have been able to save him at all.'

'Is there any medication that you need him to take for a while after you let him out?' Lupis asked quietly, his eyes looking at the floor.

'No. Once we let him out, all that needs to be done is that you need to restore his aura yourselves.'

Lupis nodded, and looked up at the doctor. 'Thank you for looking after him so well Doctor Jones.'

'No worries. It is my job to make sure that all you students don't end up killing yourselves.'

Lupis let out a small smile, shaking the doctors hand. Nathan and Garris both followed suit immediately afterwards.

'If you can all just wait right here I'll get him out in just a moment,' Doctor Jones said, heading into the hospital ward for Eric.

As soon as he was gone, Nathan let out a huge sigh, and fist pumped the air. Lupis could tell that he was glad to finally have his partner back, no matter what state his aura was in. Nathan looked up at Lupis, who was smiling at his friend.

'Lupis, we have a training session after lunch, can we take Eric there to start working on him?'

Lupis thought about this, wondering whether Eric would be able to handle any sort of physical work after being shut in a hospital for a few weeks. He was sure that Eric would want to stretch his legs and get back into his normaly daily routine as a part of Team Legion. But would he be able to handle it so quickly?

'We'll ask Eric whether he wants to or not,' Lupis replied. 'I'm sure he will want to get started immediately, but it also depends on whether he can handle it straight away.'

'Alright then.'

They waited for another minute or two before Doctor Jones came back through the door to the hospital ward, Eric close behind him.

'I'll let you all get on your way now, I'm sure you have some classes to get to,' Doctor Jones said, heading back into the hospital ward.

'Thank you so much for what you did,' Nathan said, walking forwards and giving his partner a friendly hug, and Eric gladly returned it.

'Anytime,' the doctor said, before closing the door behind him.

As soon as the door shut, Garris shouted out loud, speaking for the first time the whole day.

'YEAH! TEAM LEGION IS BACK IN BUSINESS BABY!'

The three others laughed at Garris' sudden outburst and Lupis began walking down the hallway, shaking his head at his partner.

'So, anything I've missed over the last few weeks?' the green and purple dust user asked, as he followed his team leader, Nathan and Garris both standing to his left and right respectively.

'Oh yeah tonnes of stuff,' Garris started. 'First, Lupis and Tris both fought each other in class and she got absolutely demolished by him, but he won't tell me what he must have offered her to let him win.'

Lupis turned around, an amused look on his face as his partner shrugged his shoulders at him. He quickly turned away again, shaking his head once more at the strange sense of humour that his partner had.

'And then there was this massive essay that Professor Oobleck gave us that only Nathan didn't do because he's super lazy without you.'

'Hey! I did my best! I just happened to get bored after reading what I actually had to do,' Nathan pouted.

'And an amazing job you did my good friend,' Garris replied.

As the group walked past the cafeteria, where almost the rest of the school was piling out of, they remembered the over the top food fight that had happened recently.

'Oh yeah, and two first year teams decided to have a crazy food fight and destroy the whole cafeteria!' Garris said, jumping up and down whilst pointing at the large building.

At this Lupis knew that Esh wouldn't believe him, and as he knew he would, Eric replied, 'Are you serious? I mean, you come up with some crazy stuff Garris, but that's way too much, even for you.'

'No, he's telling the truth,' Lupis said, turning slightly so that he could see his team. 'Garris was almost crushed by a huge piece of stone that came flying out of the roof when one of them was knocked out of it.'

'Wait, what?!' Eric asked, stunned that if Lupis had agreed, that it was true.

'Yeah, she got flung out and didn't land for another minute or so,' Nathan piped in.

'Well then, at least things won't be too dull for us at all if that's only the start of the semester.'

'Yeah, with the tournament coming up, I can already see lots of teams that we can watch fighting this year. A lot of even the first years are actually really freaking good this year round.' Lupis said.

'Like who?'

* * *

_After Lunch_

**Weiss**

Stabbing and slashing at the training android, her and Blake took turns attacking the poor robot, leaping over each others blades to get out of the way of each other, or to get into a position where they could land another hit.

Weiss liked to think that they were both graceful looking as they flowed around the droid, attacking as one. They both fought as if they were fighting by themselves, making the normal attacks that they were used to, but sensing when the other would be striking, and dodging out of the way so that they could land a hit.

The robot swung a training blade at the kneeling Weiss, but it was blocked by Blake's katana, leaving an opening for Weiss. Taking it, she thrust her rapier forwards into the robots neck, causing it to jitter before shutting down from excessive damage.

Yang and Ruby both whistled from the sidelines, clapping and cheering to their partners. It wasn't often that Weiss and Blake would fight an enemy together, but when they did, they worked well as a team.

'That was awesome guys!' Ruby cheered out. 'I really think that you could both end up being a better team than with your own partner!'

'Hopefully not,' Weiss said. 'I know you want to prepare us for an eventuality where we may not be with out actual partner, but we also need to practice with each other too.'

'I know Weiss, we will get to that soon, ok?'

'Alright then Ruby,' Weiss sighed. 'I'm trusting you with this.'

'Thanks!' Ruby beamed. 'Now, the next thing I want us to-'

Ruby was interrupted by a loud crashing sound. They all turned around, expecting Jaune to have knocked over some sort of equipment that had been brought out by many of the other teams, but found that it was not him for once.

A student was sprawled across the floor, multiple sets of equipment knocked over.A punching bag with patches of metal across the surface slowly rolled towards the student. His teammates urged him to get up, quickly dashing over to him.

This punching bag was used so that someone can train the accuracy of their punches. If they hit the metal surfaces, an electrical shock would zap them, and send them flying across the room.

Which is exactly what happened to the poor guy lying on the floor when a patch of metal landed against his elbow. Sent flying by the shock, the student was airborne for a few seconds before hitting the ground again and rolling into Weiss, sweeping her legs out from under her, causing her to fall to the floor.

Angrily, Weiss rose, searching for the idiot who had been so careless to cause the accident. The student was slowly rising off of the floor, moaning as he grasped at his side.

He wore a dark green jacket that reached down to the back of his knees. A deep purple lined the edges of the jacket to match the purple buttons that were along its right side. Inside the jacket was also a deep purple, but had a dark green belt running diagonally across the inside of both sides of the jacket. The belt held a whole variety of dust crystals, all of which were safely tucked in little loops to stop them from falling out. Beneath the jacket was a deep green shirt with glowing purple symbols. One of them glowed even brighter than the rest, and lay across his heart, both on his shirt and jacket.

His trousers were the complete opposite of his jacket. They were a deep purple with dark green seams. The bottoms of them were the same green and lead to a pair of black running shoes.

Weiss thought of what to say to him as he shook his head and looked at her apologetically. His purple eyes and short but scruffy green hair definitely matched the rest of his colour scheme. Running up the right side of his neck was another glowing symbol, but this one was longer than the ones on his shirt, as Weiss could see it coming out of his right hand sleeve and along the back of his palm.

Ruby, Blake and Yang all grimaced at the same time behind Weiss as they realised how much of an earful this poor student was going to get.

'YOUN INSUFFERABLE, IDIOTIC DOLT!' Weiss screamed at the student as he grimaced, leaning away from the screaming girl.

'HOW DID YOU EVEN MANAGE TO GET INTO THIS SCHOOL? YOU'RE ALMOST AS BAD AS JAUNE!'

'Hey!' Jaune called out in protest at this, but from the other side of the room where he was as far away from Weiss as possible.

'PEOPLE LIKE YOU DON'T DESERVE TO BE IN SCHOOLS LIKE BEACON! SO WHY ARE YOU EVEN HERE THEN?!'

The student looked hurt at what she had said, but in a way that made it look as if it wasn't really his fault.

'Excuse me, Ms Schnee isn't it?' a voice from behind her said.

'What?!' Weiss snapped, turning around and glaring at the tall student that now stood before her.

'Hi, I'm Lupis Drake. Listen, I know that you're a bit of a princess when it comes to things like this, but you only fell on your face, it's not as if he killed your pet cat or something.'

Weiss narrowed her eyes at Lupis, angered by what he had called her.

'A princess? Do you really think that's what I am!?'

'To be quite honest, yes,' Lupis replied, nodding.

'Well then,' Weiss said, 'I would still rather be a princess than the leader of a team that can't even fight properly.'

'I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying,' Lupis replied, curiously.

'You're the leader of Team Legion, yes?'

'Yes, I am.'

'Well, I couldn't help but notice that your team isn't registered for the Vytal Tournament. That either means that your team is not good enough to battle in the tournament, or –'

'Or what?' Lupis snarled at her, suddenly looking much more threatening than before, and Weiss almost didn't say what she was about to say. Almost.

'Or, you and your team are just a huge bunch of cowards!'

There was nothing but silence in the arena as Weiss and Lupis stared each other down, as if their eyes were daggers and the staring contest was a deadly battle for survival from the blades. Ruby looked backwards and forwards between both her partner and the older student, unsure whether she should say anything. Yang wanted to side with Lupis as Weiss had been slightly harsh towards Lupis' teammate, but knew better than to interrupt when Weiss was like this.

Team Juniper was on the other side of the room alongside what Weiss could only guess was the rest of Team Legion, as the green haired boy slowly shuffled over to them. Blake however, was interested only in Lupis, as she felt as if she had seen him before. She couldn't remember anything, but she recognised his face from somewhere.

And the silence continued until Lupis spoke softly, but menacingly.

'Are you implying that I am a coward, Ms Schnee?' he hissed at her.

No longer afraid to back down, Weiss curtly replied, 'Yes, you and your entire team.'

'Weiss, stop!' Ruby whispered at her, afraid of what the older student would do. She wasn't one to scare easily, but the look on Lupis' face made her think that he was capable of anything.

'And how do I know that you are not?' Lupis retorted.

'What?' Weiss asked, confused by his response. 'What do you –'

'Care for a battle then, right here, right now, Ms Schnee?' he replied, hissing her last name as if it were a obscure word.

A little taken aback, Weiss wasn't too sure what to respond with. Altough she was extremely confident in her abilities, Lupis was also not backing down. This meant that he was either actually very capable, or he was bluffing to try and make her back down. And that was what she believed.

'Of course, I'm not afraid of you.'

Lupis smiled, but it was a dark smile that made Weiss worry. 'Good. Who do you want to ref the match?'

'Ruby,' Weiss responded instantly.

Still a little stunned from the entire situation, Ruby looked at her partner and softly mumbled, 'Uhm, ok then.'

* * *

Weiss lifted Myrtenaster from it's sheath and gave it's barrel a spin. She rested the barrel on the ice crystal chamber. Looking up, she saw that Lupis was still watching her, his swords still resting on his hips. Still unafraid though, Weiss raised her head, moved her feet into their correct positions and held her rapier before her in the way that she had been taught.

She saw Lupis let out a small laugh at her practiced and orderly technique. He pulled his swords out of their sheaths and let them hang loosely by his side in his hands. He still stood normally, as if he were simply talking to someone next to him.

'Are you both ready?' Ruby called out to the two.

'For sure,' Lupis replied, his eyes never leaving Weiss'.

Weiss simply gave a small nod and prepared to dash towards him. Her plan was to rush him and whilst he was shocked, she would quickly attack from all angles to maximise the damage she would do to him.

'Alright then,' Ruby nervously said. 'Let the match begin!'

As soon as Ruby finished speaking, Weiss skated forwards on a glyph, speeding towards the still passive Lupis. Just as she started to swing her blade towards him, he ducked enough so that the blade would pass just above him and stuck out his leg. Not seeing his leg before her, Weiss continued skating forwards and tripped up on his leg, falling face first into the ground.

Expecting Lupis to slash at her while she was down, Weiss rolled over onto her back and held up Myrtenaster to block his attack…

Which never came.

Weiss saw her opponent a few meters away, watching her intently with a smirk on his face as if he was amused by her actions.

Feeling slightly embarassed, Weiss reached her arms behind her and flipped backwards to her feet. Once on her feet, she pointed her rapier towards Lupis and darted forwards, stopping before she reached him so that he wouldn't pull the same trick again.

Thrusting her blade quickly at him, Lupis lazily deflected the attack and flicked his sword back around to her face. Ducking backwards, Weiss watched his blade pass over her face. Standing back up, she jabbed Myrtenaster at his side which he quickly blocked with his other blade. Expecting him to swing the other sword around at her again, Weiss quickly jumped back and watched as Lupis swung his sword through where she was just standing. Darting forwards again, Weiss stabbed at his chest, but was shocked when he dodged the blow, bringing both blades against hers and pushing it away from him.

Weiss barely had time to bring her rapier back up infront of her before Lupis let out a flurry of blows with his blades. Although the speed of his attacks were not very quick, having two swords did not help the situation and made it seem as if he was only holding one sword, moving it at incredible speeds to reach different areas to attack in short amounts of time.

She would bring her rapier across her right side to deflect one attack, only to have to move it lower down to stop a blow from hitting her knee. The two were locked in a deadly dance, but with Weiss the one who was in danger. Lupis swung his blades too quickly for Weiss to have time for a counter-attack and so all she could do was continue to block his attacks.

_Defend across the left shoulder, bring it down to the right knee. Duck under next swing and defend across my right shoulder. Throw blade across to left shoudler to block the next attack and hold both blades there._

Unfortunately for Weiss, once Lupis had both of his blades clashed against hers, he quickly swung one blade backwards and slammed it back into hers. The force of the attack threw Weiss off and pushed Myrtenaster behind her. Too slow to react, Lupis swung his blade across her left knee and cut a deep gash into her knee. Seeing another attack coming across to her sword hand, Weiss moved it back slightly to deflect the attack.

And yet it was another blow that never came. Lupis stopped short of her hand and flung his sword back towards her face and left a shallow cut along her cheek. Weiss yelped and fell back, putting too much pressure on her cut knee and almost fell to the ground. Seeing another attack coming, Weiss rolled under his swing and came up on one knee. Plunging Myrtenaster into the floor, ice started to sprout from the tip of the blade and shot towards Lupis.

Or at least where he was.

He had somehow managed to dart his way over to Weiss' left and out of the way of the spiked ice that had shot forwards from where Weiss was kneeling. He started to swing his right blade towards her, when she realised that it was no longer a sword. It had changed into a long whip, which exlpained how he had escaped from the ice. He must have wrapped the whip around something and pulled himself out of the way of the ice.

And now, that whip was heading straight for her. It was too late for her to try and dart out of the way, so instead, she held Myrtenaster infront of her and flinched as the whip wrapped around the thin blade and bit into the back of her hand once it stopped. Her rapier was wrenched from her hand and sent into the corner of the room.

Lupis paused and watched Weiss again, waiting for her to make a move. She saw that there was blood trickling from his nose and was slightly confused. She was sure that she hadn't hit him, so where did the blood come from?

Lupis saw what she was staring at, and began to wipe away the blood with the back of his gloves. Taking this as an opporunity, Weiss darted forwards on a glyph towards her weapon. Too slow, Lupis swung his whip at her, missing by a hairs width.

Once she reached her weapon, Weiss picked it up and quickly turned the dust barrel until it was set to the fire dust chamber. Pointing it towards Lupis, she send out a wave of flames, which he annoying, leapt over by flicking his whip up to the ceiling, and somehow finding something for it to hold onto, and pulling himself over the flames.

Whilst he was in the air, he flicked the wrist of the hand that was still holding a sword and the blade broke apart into a second whip. Flicking his wrist once more, the whip shot towards Weiss, and wrapped itself around her arm, biting into her skin. He pulled her towards him, and Weiss shot forwards, being pulled into the air. Once they met, Lupis put out one leg and kicked her in the stomach hard.

Sent flying back to the floor, Weiss rolled backwards to her feet, only to find that Lupis had also landed and had already wrapped a whip around her waist. Pulled towards him once more, Weiss flew through the air and could do nothing as she watched him jump up and spin around before hitting her in the face with a rough kick.

Once she hit the floor, the lights illuminated the room so that Weiss could see everybody else staring at her and Lupis with shock. He had beaten her without even being hit, and Weiss felt slightly embarrassed. Her face flushed red, and she lowered her face to the floor. She couldn't bare them to see her now, she had failed so badly.

'And the match goes to Lupis,' she heard Ruby call out. 'That's all for today now guys, we should probably all get back to training now.

Weiss could care less. She wanted to sink into the floor and disappear forever so that nobody could see how much of a failure she was. Unfortunately, that wasn't going to happen as she heard footsteps walking over to her and stop once they were right infront of her.

'Need a hand up?'

Weiss looked up and saw Lupis standing there, offering a hand to her. Not willing to trust him, she refused and started to get up herself, but struggling as her knee and arm were both sore from his blade and whip.

'Come on, the match is over, and I've gotten over what you said. Don't be so stubborn and just take my hand.'

Weiss looked up at him again, before reluctantly holding up her hand for him to pull her up.

She was on her feet in no time and realised that he was supporting her by holding her arm so that she wouldn't fall from her cut knee. Confused, she looked at him, wondering why he was being so nice all of a sudden.

'I'm being nice all of a sudden because I've ended what you started, and hopefully taught you a lesson that you won't learn here at Beacon.'

Startled that he had used the same wording she had in her head, Weiss wondered if he could read minds? That would have to wait for later, as she asked him, 'What lesson?'

'That you need to respect other people no matter what mistakes they make, because you never know what sort of friends they have, and if you don't respect someone, you may come to regret it.'

Weiss nodded in understanding and saw Ruby slowly walking over to her.

Lupis saw what Ruby was doing, and signalled that she could come over with a jerk of his head. Once she was close enoguh, Lupis let go of Weiss' arm and let Ruby take ahold of her instead. He started to walk off to his team but Weiss stopped him.

'Wait,' she ordered, staring at him.

Lupis turned around, looking at her with his colourful eyes.

'If you can fight like that by yourself, why don't you enter the teams competition? Or the singles competition even?'

Lupis didn't respond, but looked at her with a sad look. After a moment, he replied, 'Because none of us four are allowed to.'

And with that, he walked over to his team again, without saying another word.

'Come on Weiss,' Ruby said, helping her friend walk over to the seating area. 'There are some healing crystals in your bag over there so we can fix up your knee.'

But Weiss wasn't listening. She was trying to understand what Lupis had just said to her.

Who said that they couldn't partake in the tournament? And why?

* * *

**Well this is definitely the longest chapter of them all so far, and it took me so long to write it too, but I loved writing every sentence. Hopefully it won't be another 3 weeks before the next chapter comes out though :P Maybe it'll be 4 instead, spice it up a bit huh?**

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**4 Days that is**


	7. Chapter 7: Meeting an Old Friend

**Blake**

The past week had been rough for Blake. With the start of the second semester, along with it came new challenges and more schoolwork. The first semester had seemed easy to Blake and she had breezed through the tests, essays and tasks that their teachers set upon the students of Beacon.

However, the work that they were getting now, made last semester seem like one of the introductory schools that normal people would go to, even before training at a combat school such as Signal Academy, where her dear leader had come from.

The essays came in numerous waves, three to five of them coming at once and all being due in a week or so. So Blake would spend lots of her free time searching through the library, looking for books that could answer the questions for her essays, and spent many nights there until it was closed, and then doing even more work back in her dorm room with the rest of her team. And once she handed the assignments back in, the process started all over again.

To make things even more difficult, with the arrival of the Vytal Tournament coming soon, Ruby had been pushing them extremely hard when it came to their training sessions after lunch. She knew that the team leader just wanted to make sure that they were all prepared for when the tournament came, but the amount of time and energy they spent each day, made it difficult for all of them to keep up with their schoolwork, even Weiss.

Blake felt as if the present time was always two steps ahead of her, causing her to stress over her schoolwork and training, as well as being able to help the rest of the team along, especially Yang, who Blake felt as if she had a duty to her as she was her partner. And to make it even worse, it seemed that she could also not escape from her past either.

It had started during that first training session when she saw the leader of team Legion, Lupis. Although she recognised his face, she could not place where she had seen him, or why he was so familiar to her. She was definitely sure that she had met him before, but no memories came to mind when she tried to think about him.

And then the message had arrived.

A few days later, Blake had received a small letter in the mail to the school, which she was utterly confused about, seeing as she had no other friends outide of Beacon and no family either. When she opened the letter, she had to struggle to keep a straight face as she was in the room with her teammates at the time.

_Blake_

_I know that when we last saw each other, things were not as friendly as they used to be.  
However, I was hoping that we could meet up, as I desperately need to talk to you.  
Even if you decide not to help me, at least come see me at the port in bay 7 this Sunday, midday._

_I will be waiting,  
Adam_

Blake was torn with what to do. She both wanted to see Adam again, and not see him again at the same time. She knew the authorities would want to see something like this to be able to take him into custody, as he was the leader of the White Fang, but it would be too difficult to explain how the letter had come into her possession, and why Adam needed to see her.

Struggling with this, Blake had looked to someone else for advice. Someone who could give her an honest opinion on whether she should go and meet with an old friend again, even though they had not last met in the best conditions.

Yang was too curious, and asking her would have lead to her partner figuring out who Blake was talking about, and would then try to keep her as far away from Adam as possible. Weiss was too busy and impatient, and she would be suspicious of who Blake was meeting with as well. Although she was much more trusting of Blake after she ran off and fought Roman last semester, Blake also felt as if it was a shaky trust that could shatter quite easily if she discovered Blake was going to talk to a member of the White Fang.

And so that left Ruby. Her team leader was extremely innocent due to her youth, but also held wisdom that Blake hadn't seen before. She had heard her talking to Jaune one night, and the little girl had been very wise when talking to the swordsman, and had even been able to convince him, indirectly, to be able to stand up to Cardin in the Forever Forest.

Which was now the next challenge that Blake had to undertake. Talking to someone had seemed like such a simple idea, but actually going through with it was much more difficult. She had been brooding over it for the whole week, and now it was Saturday night, and Blake had to make a decision now.

She had hoped that a walk through the school grounds would help her clear her head, but sadly, it had not. The darkness that now enveloped the school grounds grew lighter as she reached the dormitory building. Open curtains let out a luminescant glow and even shone behind the closed curtains too.

The chilly winter air that was biting into her skin vanished as she opened the door leading inside and closed it behind her, changing into a warm feel against her cold skin, like that of someone returning home after a cold day.

She walked through the empty hallways, making her way to her teams dormroom, her footsteps non-existant as she casually walked down the corridor, nobody any the wiser that she was there.

Once outside her room, she took in a deep breathe, preparing herself for the conversation she was about to have. She knew that it shouldn't be such a big deal, but to her, telling people things about her life, even if what she would say didn't actually contain any big details, was always difficult for her.

Swiping her scroll across the automatic lock that sat on the wall next to the door, the light flashed green and the door unlocked. Blake turned the handle, and pushed the door open, hoping that they were not already asleep.

At least Ruby wasn't, however Yang and Weiss were both asleep in their beds, Yang snoring loudly as per usual, and Weiss with her back to the door which made Blake doubt if she was really sleeping. Her incredible hearing helped Blake determine that she was asleep when she heard the slow breathing of Weiss.

Ruby, was still awake on her top bunk, a sheet rigged up around the edge of her bed so that the light from her torch wouldn't be too bright for the other too girls to try and sleep. Blake could see Ruby's silhouette against the light, and based on how Ruby did not react from the door opening, did not know that Blake was in the room.

Silently crossing the room, Blake reached up to Ruby's bed and gently brushed aside the sheet that hid Ruby from view.

Startled, Ruby jumped when the sheet began moving, but when she saw that it was only Blake, calmed down quickly.

'Hi Blake, you've been gone for ages, where did you go?' Ruby whispered.

'I was out walking,' Blake said, stepping backwards slightly. 'Listen Ruby, I need to ask you something.'

'Uhm, ok Blake. What is it?' the young girl asked her.

Blake took another deep breath before beginning to speak to Ruby.

'That letter I got earlier this week, it was from an old friend of mine.' Blake said slowly, watching Ruby's face for any signs of understanding in regards to who the friend may be. Although Blake had never told any of them about Adam, they knew her past with the White Fang, and Ruby could probably guess that it was likely someone from the group.

If she did, Ruby showed no signs of it, and simply let Blake continue with a nod of her head.

'Well, they asked if we could meet up again, tomorrow to be exact. The only issue with this is that the last time we saw each other, you could say that we weren't exactly on the best of terms.'

'And you're wondering if you should go or not. But why ask me?' Ruby questioned the cat faunus.

'Because I can't decide whether I want to go or not. Because I don't really trust them anymore because of what drove us apart, I can't decide what I want to do.'

Ruby stared at Blake for a moment, thinking deeply on what to tell Blake. Blake patiently waited for a response, not rushing her leaders thought process.

'Well Blake, I think that you should go and meet them. You can't let the past get in the way of a friendship. Sure, they may have done something bad before, but maybe now they just want to try and make it up to you.'

Blake marveled at the simplicity of Ruby's thinking, but was still uncertain whether she really wanted to go.

'It's just, I'm kinda scared Ruby,' Blake whispered quietly.

'I'm sure that whatever happened couldn't have been that bad. They wouldn't have contacted you if they didn't want to apologize, no matter how long it took them too. Even if you don't accept it, you should at least give them a chance to say what they want to say.'

Blake thought about it before nodding at Ruby. 'Ok, I'll go and see them then.'

Ruby smiled at her teammate. 'Cool, good luck for tomorrow Blake.'

'Thanks Ruby,' Blake quickly replied, silently changing out of her clothes and into her sleepwear. Crawling into bed, Blake curled up like a cat and closed her eyes, snuggling her face closer to her pillow.

* * *

Blake had taken a more casual attire that what she normally wore. A white collared V-neck shirt that led down to the middle of her chest replaced her usual white blouse and black vest. Ribbons were wrapped around her forearms with another one tied around her waist like a belt. Her black-purple pants were replaced with ones that were completely black, but kept her black boots on her feet. A black shirt of the same design of the one Yang wore hang off her hips and draped across the back half of her legs. And as usual, Blake kept her ribbon, tied up in a bow on her head to hide her ears from view.

Blake often tried to avoid the port, as it always smelt like fish, and Blake really liked the smell of fish. The only problem with that, was that she became very irrationally when she could smell her favourite food, especially tuna.

The workers down at the port were staring at Blake strangely, wondering why somebody like her would be in a place like this. The very few that thought they would try anything funny with her were quickly steered away when Blake gave them a glare that told them not to screw around with her.

Once she reached Bay 7, the first thing she noticed was that Adam was not there. Checking her scroll for the time, she could verify that it was just after 12, and that Adam should be there by now. Sitting down on a nearby crate, Blake waited patiently for Adam to arrive, all the while keeping an eye out for any suspicious activity, just in case this was all just a trap.

The minutes passed by, and Blake was beginning to think that she should just leave until she heard footsteps approaching her from behind.

Spinning her head around, she looked for the source of the noise, her eyes widening when she saw him.

He looked the same as he did three years ago, at least from what Blake could see. Behind his mask his eyes probably made him seem years older than he really was, but they were hidden just like always.

His mask was different, likely so that people wouldn't immediately realize who he was. Instead of the usual white bone mask with red highlights, it was a pitch black with lines running across it horizontally. His brown-red hair and dark red horns were still sticking upright as they always did, both slightly longer than they were when Blake had last seen him.

The rest of his clothes were the same as they always were however. He still wore his short trench-coat, with the intricate designs leading from across his heart to his back and along the bottom of his coat. The coat was buttoned across his stomach, revealing a dark red shirt underneath it. Wilt and Blush were still on his hip, sheathed it simply looked like a black sword, but Blake knew first hand the damage that the weapon could do.

Once he was close enough, Adam stopped in front of Blake, and although she couldn't see his eyes, knew that he was looking her up and down, examining her, taking in every detail that he could. Blake swiveled around on the wooden crate, hanging her legs off the end of the box once she was facing her old partner.

'Adam,' she said calmly.

'Blake,' he said, nodding his head towards her slightly. 'It's been a while. You look good.'

Blake closed her eyelids and rolled her eyes so that he couldn't see. Opening them again, she looked at Adam once more, a look of impatience on her face. 'Flattery isn't going to get you anywhere Adam. It may have worked before, but not any more.'

Nodding his head again, Adam swiftly replied, 'Of course, I wasn't expecting it to, I was just stating facts.'

Forcing herself not to roll her eyes again, Blake sighed before speaking again. 'Why are you here Adam?'

'Straight to business huh? Don't you want to catch up or anything?'

'No. We are not friends Adam. That is in the past now. I came here because you said you needed to talk to me to ask for my help. That is the only reason I am here, nothing else.'

'Alright then. We should start walking, we look a bit suspicious right now.'

Narrowing her eyes at him, suspicious that he was trying to lead her into a trap. 'Fine, but if you try anything, you will regret it.'

'I don't doubt it,' he said, holding his hand out for her to hold as she jumped off the box.

Ignoring it, she leapt off herself, landing on the wooden dock quietly, making no noise as she landed. She began to walk away from the dock, Adam closely following her. He caught up to her quickly and started speaking to her once he was by her side.

'Listen Blake, I know that you left because you lost faith in us, in me, but right now, I really need your help right now. How much do you know about Roman Torchwick?'

'Not too much other than he's a thief and that he is using the White Fang to help him gain whatever he needs. I had a run in with him and a small band of them a couple of weeks ago at the docks. He was trying to steal lots of crates full of dust. Because of that, I had trouble deciding whether I should come at all.'

'It's unfortunate that you went through that. If you took that more angrily, I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't show up, but I'm glad you did. Torchwick has someone inside the White Fang that has been taking members away from me to help work with Torchwick without my consent. I've been losing control of them all for the last couple of months now, and I need them back to continue with my work.'

Blake stopped walking, grabbing Adam's arm so that he stopped too. 'Why would I help you get them back then? I left because I didn't like the methods of the group anymore, so why should I help you get your soldiers back just so you can continue with what you were doing?'

'Because Torchwick is only a pawn in a bigger game. I can tell from what I have seen that Torchwick is only following orders from a higher power. I don't know what the long term result him and whoever he is working for is hoping for, but with someone like him acting as the person who is the public face of the group, there have to be forces bigger than the White Fang at work.'

'And that's a risk that I'm willing to take. Adam, whatever Torchwick is making them do can't possibly be as bad as what you have been forcing them to do to humans over the last five years. I'm sorry Adam, but I just can't help you with this.'

The silence between them was extremely tense as Adam stared at Blake from behind his mask, and Blake stared back at him. It was a while before Adam backed down, sighing. He took a step back and started to turn away from Blake.

'I thought that may be your answer, but I had to try, you understand that, don't you Blake?' he asked, turning his head to look for her answer.

'Yes, I do,' Blake replied.

'Good, but if this is how you feel, I won't bother you again. Good luck at Beacon Blake,' Adam said, turning away from her. But what he had said made Blake remember something else that had been on her mind, and she realized that he may be someone with answers.

'Wait!' Blake called out. 'Can I ask you something?'

Adam stopped and turned back around. 'Go ahead.'

Blake took a breath before asking him, 'Does the name Lupis Drake mean anything to you?'

Adam hesitated for a second, before replying in a dark and brooding tone, 'No, it doesn't.'

Blake wan't sure if he was lying or not. His hesitation suggested that he may have, but the way he said no made it seem as if he did not. Blake was unable to tell, but decided that she wasn't going to get any answers out of Adam. 'Ok then, goodbye Adam.'

'Goodbye Blake.' And Adam left, turning on his heel and walking away, down a side street out of her sight. Once he was gone, Blake leant against a nearby wall and slid down it to the ground, her legs pressed against her chest. Putting her head in her hands, Blake sighed and fought to hold back tears. She had always been close to Adam, and even after all that had happened, she still had feelings for Adam, and acting in the way that she just had made it even harder to say goodbye than the last time.

After a few moments, she collected herself before standing up again and making her way back to the airport to catch the Bulkhead back to Beacon.

* * *

**Roman**

'Do you understand the task that I have given you four?' Roman asked rudely, towards the four criminals standing before him.

'For the seventh time Roman, yes! We know what you have told us to do!' Emerald snapped back at him, her bright red eyes almost glowing in the light of the almost empty warehouse that the rest of the White Fang members were moving the rest of the crates of dust from.

'However Roman, your task is only secondary compared to the one that I have set us to complete. It would be a shame for me to have to punish you again now, wouldn't it?' Cinder asked, gently caressing the side of Romans face with a hand print burnt into his skin.

Flinching from the touch, Roman backed away, causing Cinder to smile. 'Do not worry Roman. We will get both tasks completed at the same time. And once I am satisfied with out work, you may begin the second stage of your own plan. It is not often that I allow people that are under me to make plans, but seeing as what you want also helps me out, be grateful that I you were given this chance.'

'Yeah, I get the vibe from those two over there,' Roman said, jerking his thumb towards both Emerald and Mercury, the former sticking out their tongue at the orange haired criminal.

Turning towards the fourth member of the group, Roman stared at the faunus boy that stood before him. He had extremely short brown hair on the top of his head so that his short, brown bear ears were easily seen. Obviously some sort of pride thing with these members of the White Fang. Black eyes of the same colour as the uniform that all four of them were wearing to be undercover stared back at him.

'And you, you are going to be the one that I am relying on most to get me the rest of the intel I need. You need to stick around these three to make it more believable that you are all exchange students, but you also need to be able to get around the school, so make sure you co-ordinate what you are doing with them, got it?'

'Yes Roman,' the faunus said, nodding his head.

'Good, the next Bulkhead heading to Beacon will be leaving shortly, you should all get moving.'

'Don't worry Roman,' Cinder said, as they all started to leave. 'We will all be just fine.'

* * *

**See? Four days? How good am I?**

**So, this was actually more of a filler chapter again, but in all honesty, I had to get the whole Adam thing sorted out as well as get some more stuff about Roman and the rest of the criminals in the story. I know that there was a distinct lack of Team Legion in this one, but I'm bringing in another OC anyway, so that kinda counts right?**

**I am also going to start uploading these every Saturday now, so that includes the one in 3 days. After that, it should be a chapter per week (hopefully :P)**

**Other than that, thanks for reading and I hope you'll still be back for the next one :)**


	8. Chapter 8: A Duel with a Grimm

**Ruby**

Ruby wasn't a sleepy person. She was always energetic, and bouncing off of the walls. But in Professor Port's classes, his endless tales of his heroics in the past did nothing but send her to sleep. And it wasn't just her.

Weiss, who respected the elderly professor greatly, was able to stay awake in class, doing her best to take down notes for the rest of the team to read and copy down in their room later on in the night.

Blake was leaning back in her seat, and subtly taking a nap in her chair, but fully aware in regards to what was going on around her.

Her partner on the other hand, was the complete opposite from Blake, and was sprawled across her desk, snoring loudly with her face pressed against the paper of her book. Even though Yang was snoring, it didn't interrupt the professor as he continued to talk about how he had once taken on a fully grown Deathstalker without his weapon in order to defend a village outside of Vale.

Looking over to Jaune's team, Ruby saw that they were also acting similarly to Ruby's team.

Jaune his face in one hand, the other on top of his desk, a pencil in had. If you didn't look closely, you would have assumed that he was simply waiting to write down more notes.

Nora was much like Yang, and was also lying across her desk using her book for a pillow. Although she didn't snore as loudly as Yang, Nora was also sleeping soundly. Ren was leaning forwards in his seat, head facing the page on the table before him, eyes firmly closed. He wasn't really sleeping, he was just taking a power nap until he needed to wake up.

Pyrrha was the only one in the room, other than Weiss, who looked like she was paying attention to what the teacher was saying.

Looking back to Professor Port, Ruby silently thanked Oum, as she could see the professor had started to wrap up his tale.

'And so, one I had defeated the beast, I returned to the village, and let them know that they were safe, and left as a hero to yet another town,' the professor finished, taking a small bow. He didn't receive any claps from the students, but Ruby was sure that he imagined thunderous applause whilst he bowed before them all.

'But, enough with the tales for one day. It is time for me to introduce to you all a new Grimm, of which you will not have met before.'

At this, everyone in the class perked up, suddenly much more interested in the class.

'Aha! Now you are all listening aren't you? I would assume as much, I myself was always eager to learn more about the Grimm when I was a hunter-in-training.'

'So far, I have taught you all about the most common Grimm that you can find. Beowolves, Ursa, Nevermores, King Taijitus, Boarbatusks and Deathstalkers. Today, I will be introducing you, and letting one of you battle, a Grimm that is related to the fearsom Deathstalkers.'

Ruby could see Weiss in the corner of her eye straighten up, obviously hoping to be able to be the one who would demonstrate a fight with the class.

Professor Port had walked around to the back of the class where there were large drawings with descriptions of the various Grimm that were being presented to the class. Placing his hand on the board with the Deathstalker being displayed, he picked it up and spun it around so that the class could see the new picture that was on the back of the board.

The first part of the picture that Ruby noticed was that the name of the Grimm was extremely similar to that of the Deathstalker. Named 'Deathcrawler' the Grimm best resembled a spider. Based on what she could see on the drawing, Ruby could see that the beast had razor sharp legs that would likely be be just as sharp as Crescent Rose.

'As you can see, the Deathcrawler is basically, a giant spider. But! Do not let this fool you! The Deathcrawler has sharp legs, pincers, and is able to trap you with webs that it can shoot from its rear! Once trapped, you will struggle to fight back, and the beast will only be more likely to trap you futher.'

'As it is related to the fearsome Deathstalker, the Deathcrawler is very similar in size. They are often slightly smaller than the Deathstalker, but can also be the same size, or larger. Deathcrawlers will continue to grow, and some can be the size of Nevermores, although they need to live for near on one hundred years before they can reach this size.'

'I have not brought one of these full-sized creatures into class with me, so instead I have brought a younger specimen, one that is safe for us to battle against in here. So, who would like to help demonstrate a battle with this fearsome creature?'

Unsurprised, Weiss had her hand raised before the Professor had spoken more than two words. Waving her hand frantically, she caught the attention of the Professor extremely quickly. Once he turned to her, they could all see that he looked extremely amused.

'Ms Schnee, you have assisted multiple times throughout the past semester, and although I appreciate your eagerness to aid in the learning off your classmates, I would prefer that a different student demonstrates today.'

Slightly upset, Weiss lowered her hand and folded her arms as the Professor started to scan the rest of the class for a student that he could use for the demonstration. Eventually he stopped, his eyes resting on a student.

'Mr Arc! Would you so kindly partake in the demonstration?'

Everybody looked at Jaune, who had a shocked look on his face, and was looking around to check that he wasn't asking a different Mr Arc. Realising that there wasn't another one, he took a resigned sigh and replied, 'Yes Professor.'

'Excellent! Please, make your way to the lockers and change out of your school uniform and into your combat attire!'

Jaune nodded, but before he stood, he looked at Pyrrha and although Ruby didn't have the super hearing that Blake had, she knew that he was asking Pyrrha something. Her assumption was confirmed when Pyrrha nodded to him, and Jaune stood walking out of the class.

'Alright then students, please be sure to take notes on the strategies that the Deathcrawler takes whilst battling Mr Arc, and see how it uses its body to fight.'

Raising her hand, Professor Port turned to Pyrrha, who was obviously wanting to ask a question.

'Yes Ms Nikos?'

'May I please be excused Professor Port?' Pyrrha asked.

'Of course my dear! Do try to return before Mr Arc, but if you do not, we can wait until you return so that you may also watch the battle.

'Thank you Professor,' Pyrrha said, raising from her seat and leaving the classroom.

* * *

**Pyrrha**

Jaune was waiting outside the classroom for Pyrrha and once she left the class, he called her over.

'Pyrrha, what am I going to do? I can barely fight something with the whole team, how am I going to do this myself?' Jaune asked her, panic through his voice.

Pyrrha placed a hand on Jaune's shoulder. 'You'll do fine Jaune. Just remember what I have been teaching you for the last few months and you will do fine. You have a strong defense. You have extremely high aura levels, so you should be able to hold out against it until you defeat it. Remember to keep your shield up, and watch out for attacks so that you can block it. Fast and quick swings so that you take the least amount of time attacking as possible. If you get pushed into a tight space, stab at it quickly and repeatedly so that it backs off and lets you get out. You got that?'

'Ok, I better get going now. I guess I'll see you in a minute then?' Jaune said, starting to walk off to the nearby locker room.

'Yes, good luck Jaune!' Pyrrha called out as her leader walked away from her. 'And remember! Keep your shield up!'

'I got it!'

Pyrrha smiled at Jaune's retreating back before turning to head back into the class again and sitting down next to Nora again. Both her and Ren looked at her the latter asking her, 'Is Jaune alright with this?'

'Yes,' Pyrrha responded, nodding her head at her teammate. 'I've reminded him of what to do. Now everything is just going to come down to him.'

* * *

**Jaune**

It didn't take long for him to change into his combat gear and retrieve Crocea Mors from his locker. Once he had returned to the classroom, Jaune had unsheathed his sword and expanded his shield, prepared for the upcoming battle.

'Are you ready, Mr Arc?' Professor Port asked, brandishing his blunderbuss in his hand, the blades of his axe gleaming in wait to cut the lock of the cage containing the Deathcrawler. The cage wasn't rattling, in fact it showed no signs of containing a Grimm at all.

Jaune nodded, raising his shield and pointing his sword towards the cage in the fashion that Prrha had taught him.

'Then let the match begin!' the teacher said, swinging his axe through the lock, letting the door spring open. But nothing came rushing out at Jaune. The cage was still very dark, and the lack of a red glow of the Grimm's eyes unsettled Jaune. He looked over at the teacher, who jerked his head towards the cage, indicating that he should approach it.

Taking a breath, Jaune slowly creeped up on the cage. The closer he came to it, the more he could see inside it. Around the entrance was a thick web that obstructed his view of inside the cage. Uncertain of what to do next, Jaune looked over to Pyrrha, who shrugged her shoulders to him. Unsure of what to do now, Jaune gulped before approaching the cage again, only stopping when he was standing directily before the cage and yet there was still no sign of the Grimm.

Taking another breath, Jaune hoped that he wouldn't regret this and stabbed his sword into the cage. The blade didn't travel far before it became stuck in something. Unfortunately, when the sword was ripped from his hands and pulled inside the cage, Jaune took several steps backwards, his shield raised to his face. Peeking over the top of his shield, there was no response from the Grimm for another few seconds until eight glowing eyes peered out of the darkness at him. A shriek that sounded like fingernails across a chalkboard rang through the classroom, causing everyone in the classroom to flinch and cover their ears, including Jaune. Lowering his shield to cover his ears, Jaune's defense now lowered, the Deathcrawler darted out of the cage towards Jaune.

'Jaune! Look out!' Pyrrha called out.

Looking up, Jaune saw the dark blur heading towards him, and was barely able to raise his shield again before he was pushed backwards from the sheer force of the creature. Flung into the back wall of the class, Jaune grunted loudly as he fell to the floor. Looking up, he got his first good look at the Grimm.

Just like all other Grimm, it was a deep black with a white bone mask with glowing red lines and eyes. White pincers were underneath the mask, both of them around half the size of the blade of Crescent Rose. Eight long, hairy legs supported a large body that was covered with one large piece of bone armour across its back. Its abdomen had a sting which was currently retracted inside it's body. The Deathcrawlers legs had sharp claws that left small marks on the floor every time it took a step.

Jaune stood back up, raising his shield as the monster charged towards Jaune again, pincers clicking loudly. It crashed into his shield again, pushing Jaune against the wall, its pincers wrapped around both sides of his shield. It yanked its head backwards, pulling Jaune and his shield with it.

Jaune couldn't keep a grip on his shield, and let go of it, getting flung across the room. The only thing that could make it worse was the comment that Professor Port made once he landed before the Professor.

'Haha! Weren't expecting it to be so violent were you?'

Standing again, Jaune turned his head to see the Deathcrawler scuttling towards him again. Jaune ran towards the beast, and slid under its belly, hoping he could get behind it and get to his shield which was laying on the floor.

Once he was out of the way of the arachnid, Jaune stumbled to his feet and ran towards his shield. He was only feet away from it before he suddenly couldn't move his feet anymore. Looking down, he saw that his feet were stuck to the ground in a sticky web.

'Haha! How are you going to fight back now that you can't move?'

Jaune gritted his teeth and pulled his legs upwards to try and escape from the web that had stuck him to the floor. Although he could lift his legs up, the webs just stretch and didn't let him move. Hearing the sound of the Deathcrawler moving around on the floor again, Jaune resorted to throwing himself on the floor and reached for his shield.

Just within reach, Jaune curled his fingers around the edge of his shield and pulled it towards him. Putting it on his left arm, Jaune swung his arm around behind him and bashed the Deathcrawler in the face as it reached him. Reeling backwards, the monster let out another shriek that caused everyone to cover their ears again.

Jaune resisted the urge, and instead started to cut to web off of his feet with the edge of his shield. The web wasn't as thick as he thought, and Jaune was able to cut through the web rather quickly. Standing up again, Jaune readied himself for the next attack.

The Deathcrawler was much more wary of him now, and scuttled around him, observing him. Taking a chance, Jaune rushed at the monster, which in turn, charged at him. Once close enough, Jaune jumped into the air, placing his shield atop the Deathcrawlers head and rolled across his shield, running across its back before sliding off of its back, slamming the edge of his shield into its back.

He was quickly flung off as the Grimm shrieked and jerked around in pain. Landing in a roll, Jaune rushed towards the cage, eager to get his sword back. Swinging his shield into the webs with a backhanded strike, the webs move out of the way and Jaune fumbled around for his sword, feeling its hilt almost immediately.

He pulled the sword towards him and turned around, tumbling out of the cage as he tripped over a thick web that was lying across the bottom of the cage. Seeing the Deathcrawler heading back over to him, he lifted his shield and struggled to keep it up as one of the sharp legs impaled his shield, attempting to force it down. Pushing his shield aside, Jaune swung his sword at the leg that was stuck in his shield, severing it from the Grimm's body.

The creature shrieked and stumbled for a moment as it tried to balance itself after losing a leg. Jaune took the opportunity and stood up, quickly swinging his at another leg that was nearby, also cutting it loose from the Deathcrawlers body.

He was pushed backwards as the creature leapt towards him, pushing him to the floor. It closed its pincers around his shield again, but this time, Jaune reached his sword over the top of the shield and thrust his blade deep into the mouth of the creature.

Pulling back again, the beast stumbled away from Jaune, who slowly got back to his feet. He rushed the monster, stabbing his blade underneath the Grimm's mask. Pushing the hilt upwards, his blade cut through the rest of the Grimm's head, cutting it in half.

The arachnid fell to the ground, and began to fade away into shadows.

'Well done Mr Arc!' Professor Port called across the classroom. 'You have done very well! I congratulate you for being able to take out such a powerful foe! Even if it is only a small one.'

'I hope you have all taken a good amount of notes, as I expect you all to have a report on the fighting tactics of the Deathcrawler by next class. I would tell you a tale of when I once took on an entire nest of the foul beasts, but alas, time has run out, and you may now leave for lunch. Class dismissed!'

The sound of everyone beginning to move filled the room and Jaune stumbled over to his team.

'Well done Jaune!' Pyrrha congratulated. 'I'm very pround of you! You did very well, even without your weapon!'

'And you broke some of it's legs!' Nora exclaimed, throwing a fist into the air.

Jaune couldn't help but let out a smile at his teammates excitement. 'Come on. We should go get something to eat before we go to the arena to practice for the tournament. I talked to Ruby and she said that we could have a fight between our teams to make it feel like an actual fight, not practicing with robots.'

'That's a good idea,' Ren said, nodding to his leader. 'But before we eat, you should get a change of clothes, you have webs all over you.'

* * *

**This one is really late, but I was a bit busy with some other things recently. This was sorta just to introduce the Deathcrawler, which I got an inspiration from when a spider tried to sleep with me the other night :P**

**The next one is when I'm going to really get properly into the plot of the story, and there will be some chapters involving Cinder's, Mercury's, Emerald's and the mysterious White Fang member's points of view. But, until then, you'll just have to wait another week**


	9. Chapter 9: Students From Haven

**Ruby**

Ruby and the rest of her team were currently practicing once again for the tournament. Over the few weeks that the teams had been given access to the sparring arena for practice, Team RWBY hadn't missed a single practice session. Team Juniper was the same and had always gone alonside Ruby's team.

Ruby wasn't normally worried about any other students watching her and her team practicing. Both Sun and Neptune had been around a few times, and although they were meant to be rivals for the tournament, they were also friends. Ruby was also sure that they weren't there to watch them practice, instead they were likely there to see Blake and Weiss.

But a new team had arrived recently from Haven, and so far, from what Yang had heard, they had been present at almost every practice session to watch people fighting. The amount of time they had spent observing everyone, it wasn't unlikely that they knew the tactics and strategies of every student and every team in the school.

And yet, the team had not once bothered to practice at all. Ruby was wondering whether they thought themselves too good to need to practice, or perhaps they were too scared, nervous or embarassed to try.

Ruby was sure that it was more likely the first option, as none of them looked as if they were incapable of combat. Especially the faunus boy that was with them today. The team had been present for most of her teams practices, but today was the first time that Ruby had seen him at the arena.

At first look, you wouldn't have thought that he was a faunus at all, as he didn't have very obvious faunus features. Although he still had the trademark ears, being a bear faunus, they were much smaller than other faunus ears, and were covered by his messy brown hair.

He wore the same uniform as the other male student from his team, a dark black blazer with a white trim and a white armband around the left bicep. Matching black pants did nothing more than help his eyes stand out even more than they already did. His eyes were a deep black, which made it unsettling when he saw Ruby looking at him and looked her in the eyes, making her feel as if he was absorbing her soul.

Getting shivers down her spine, Ruby quickly looked away from him and back to her team. They weren't focusing on anything major for the day, instead they were working on somethine useful to them on a piece of equipment.

Yang was viciously attacking one of the shock punch bags, expertly hitting the sack to cause maximum damage, whilst maintaining control to not hit the electrified parts that would give her a shock.

Weiss was practicing the use of her glyphs for both her movement and protection. Blake was shooting at the heiress with practice slugs so that she wouldn't cause any serious damage to her teammate. Weiss would block the bullets with glyphs and move around to give Blake the challenge of having to hit a moving target.

Ruby glanced at her scroll and realised that their time at the arena was almost over. Looking up at her teammates, she called out to them to stop.

'Ok guys, we did really well today! Our time's up though, so we need to get moving before the next group arrives!'

The three other members of her team stopped what they were doing, looking at the young leader before acknowledging her and beginning to pack up.

Ruby went to go and help Jaune pack away, who was struggling to move the practice dummy by himself, but was stopped when a hand placed itself on her shoulder. Turning her head around to see who had grabbed her, Ruby saw one of the Haven students had made their way down to her.

'Excuse me,' the girl said to Ruby. 'Me and my team only arrived a few days ago, and we still don't really know our way aroud your school. Could you possibly show us around so that it will be easier for us to get around later on?'

Despite the girl's bright red eyes, the girl looked trustworthy to Ruby. Looking over to the rest of the green-haired girls' team, Ruby saw that the three other students were watching the pair eagerly. It was likely that the faunus was also listening in on the conversation.

Looking back to the girl before her, Ruby made a decision.

'Well, I can show you around the dorm rooms that all the exchange students are going to, and show you around to the most important places in the school.'

The girl beamed at Ruby, thanking her.

'Thank you so much, we've all been really lost since we got here. This is the only place we were able to find!'

'No problem!' Ruby replied. 'But can you just wait until my team has packed up?'

'Of course.'

* * *

It didn't take long to store all of the equipment away and before long, the four girls were walking the team from Haven around the school, showing them the most important places, such as the cafeteria, where they were heading to now.

'So Emerald, what do you think of Beacon so far?' Weiss asked the darker girl.

'It's much bigger than Haven. But it's really unorganised too. At Haven, everything is really close together and in an orderly fashion so that it's easier to get around. But it doesn't really look nice. Haven is just four different blocks around a courtyard in the middle. Here, everything is open, and detailed. Something must be going right at here though, I hear Beacon trains some of the best Huntsmen and Huntresses that get seen.'

'Yes. It could just be some of the students, as some teachers at this school is quite, interesting, to say the least,' Weiss replied to the girl.

Ruby smiled at her teammates comment, knowing exactly which Professor she was talking about. Some other students were taking small glances towards the two teams as they walked across the large courtyard towards the cafeteria building.

'You probably found this already, but just in case you forget later on, this is where we eat,' Ruby announced to the Haven team. 'Breakfast is at 8 and the cooks stop making food at 8.30, but you can always stay and eat anything that is left. At least, until you have a class to go to.'

'Lunch is at 12 and goes through to 1. Then dinner is at 6 until 7. You can look up on the noticeboards around the school what is being cooked at dinner, and if you don't like it, you can always order something to your room.'

'Can you stay and eat what is left after 7, just like you can at breakfast?' Mercury questioned.

'You can stay and eat,' Yang replied, walking alongside the tall, grey haired boy. 'But there is a curfew at 9, and by then you have to be in the dormitories. Not necessarily your dorm room, so you can visit other people in the building at that time, you just can't see anybody who isn't there.'

Mercury nodded, and gave Yang a smile of gratitude, which in turn, led to a snarl from Emerald, who saw the interaction.

The group continued to walk past the cafeteria, where several teams were either eating or revising. There were a select few that were doing both at the same time. Ruby didn't recognize anybody from inside the building, so decided against going inside. She was sure they wouldn't need to see inside anyway.

'Where is the medical bay?' Rowan asked.

'It's that building over there,' Weiss said, pointing to a building that was smaller than everything else at Beacon, but was still quite large to look at. 'Hopefully you won't need it though. It's only for really severe injuries, minor cuts and scratches we can heal with our auras easily.'

'What about the headmaster's office?' Cinder, the team leader asked. 'We noticed that there is some, faunus discrimination with some students, and we wanted to bring it up to him. At Haven, we don't have any discrimination towards faunus students.'

'He already knows about the faunus discrimination,' Blake piped in. 'So there isn't really any need to go and see him. But just in case there is anything you need to talk to him about, his office is at the top of the building at the far end of the academy.'

Blake pointed at the large tower that was half hidden as it rose through the clouds.

The group headed over to the dormitories and at this point, Cinder and her team knew where they were going.

'Thank you for showing us where things were, that was very kind of you,' Emerald said to Ruby.

'No problem! It's our job as huntresses and huntsmen to help people out!'

Emerald gave a smile to the young girl, before turning and heading with the rest of her team to their dorm room.

Ruby and her team members started walking up the stairs to their room. Yang turned to her younger sister.

'They seemed like a nice enough group of people!'

* * *

**Rowan**

Once they reached their room, Rowan pulled out his key card and opened the door to their room. He stood to the side and allowed the three humans in first, as he wasn't going to be staying with them. He had a job to do.

'Did you get her scroll Emerald?' Cinder asked calmly, placing herself on the bed in the middle of the room.

Pulling out a scroll with a red rose design on the back from her pocket, Emerald gave a small smile and a nod to Cinder. She threw the device to her leader, who caught it in her hand and began to open the phone, using a program on her own scroll to help her get through the feeble password on the red girl's scroll.

'Mercury, did you figure out anything about them from watching today?' Cinder asked.

'Teams Juniper and RWBY were the only threatening first years that were there today. Legacy and Titan don't look too challenging. Titan is more so based on offense and none of them have a proper defense. Legacy is the complete opposite. No offense, all defense.'

'What about the others?'

'Justice and Imperial attack in an orderly manner. They don't have much variation in how they attack or defend, so they wouldn't be that much of an issue for us, but they would still be effective against untrained warriors, like the White Fang members.'

'The third year team wasn't even here today, so I can't tell what they were like. But if they didn't bother to turn up, they are either to ashamed to practice with other students, or too good to even bother.'

Cinder nodded, listening intently to every word that Mercury spoke, whilst finally getting through into Ruby's scroll. Setting up a link between a spare scroll that she had brought along and the stolen one, making the blank one a complete copy of Ruby's.

Looking up, she threw the phone back to Emerald who caught it and started to walk out the door again. She had to return it to the battle arena before anybody realized it was missing, hopefully the energetic girl would think that she just left it behind.

Cinder looked at Rowan, who was still standing in the doorway.

'You know what your task is Rowan. You should get moving. Do your best to stay out of sight, but if things get too messy, do not hesitate to kill whoever is in your way.

'Of course,' Rowan said, closing the door after Emerald and following her out of the building. Once outside, they split ways. Emerald headed back to the arena, whilst Rowan made his way over to the large building where all of the teacher's offices and living quarters were.

His first stop however, was the nearby security center. The center was responsible for the various security measures that kept the academy safe. Concrete walls surrounded the school around from where the school met land.

On the cliff, Beacon was only exposed to air, or to the water at the bottom of the rocks. Defensive turrets guarded the landing pad to control air control, and the water was monitored with video cameras, so that if security saw anybody trying to climb up the cliff, they would have a team of  
A-130's at the top of the cliff in no time.

The only entrance into the school via land, was a large iron gate, outfitted with an electrical surge device, which would repel anybody who tried to open the gate without authorization.

Getting to the security room wasn't an issue. Not being seen was the issue.

Rowan made his way through the wide corridors, hiding behind corners when staff members walked past, or out of doors. Being a high-ranking member of the White Fang, Rowan was used to participating in infiltration missions, and was able to reach the security center with ease.

Pressing his ear to the door, Rowan could hear two people conversing with each other.

'Did you see that match between Drake and Chase yesterday? He's just constantly on a roll, never loses!'

'Nah, I missed it. How long did she last? Two minutes?'

'Less. Try again.'

'One minute?'

At this point, Rowan had quietly turned the handle for the door, and snuck into the room, shutting the door behind him without as much as a click.

'Close enough. He took her out in roughly 50 or so seconds.'

'You kidding me?!'

'Nah man. She put up a good fight, but just like always, she didn't even hit him once.'

Rowan took out a small tool from his pocket and started to unscrew the back panel of one of the large computers in the back of the room, keeping an eye on the two security officers in case they turned around and saw him.

'That's crazy man, I hope I never get on his bad side.'

'No offense, but you would need to know him first, and I highly doubt that you will ever know him.'

Rowan smiled at the comment, and caught the panel as it fell off of the back of the computer, gently lowering it so that it leaned against the wall and the floor. He pulled out a small, mechanical device, and began to connect it to multiple wires in the computer.

He hadn't chosen a random computer, he had made sure that he was putting it into the one that controlled all of the security systems. It was easy for him to identify which computer it was as soon as he walked through the door, seeing as he had done this multiple times before, and to much more secure companies and businesses than this school.

He lifted the panel back up and started screwing the panel back in. Whilst he did this, something started to tug at his mind. As if he had just heard something that was a distant memory that he couldn't remember. He started listening in on the conversation again.

'Even though she has that really powerful semblance of hers, Drake's weapons and his style makes it impossible for you to fight properly at either close or a further distance.'

'Further distances? Oh right, his blades turn into those whips. Really cool design in my opinion.'

And there it was again. Another tug at the back of Rowan's mind. The small description of the weapons that he had just heard seemed awfully familiar to him, but he couldn't place why.

Finishing his task, Rowan quietly crept back out of the room, holding his breathe to make even less noise. He only let the breath out once he was outside and the door was closed.

And yet this was only the easier part of the job. He still had to get into Ozpin's office and plant the next bug on the headmaster's scroll.

* * *

He took the lift up to the top floor, and prayed that only Ozpin was there. He had already practiced a conversation, and if he had to stray from it too much, his cover could be blown quickly.

Once the elevator stopped on the top floor and the doors opened, Rowan stepped out directly into the headmaster's office.

The simplicity of the office surprised him. He was expecting expensive rugs and furniture, bookshelves filled with every book under the sun, and a large desk to boost the headmaster's ego.

Instead, the room was bare, empty. A desk sat at the far end of the room, before a large window. Professor Ozpin was standing up, facing out of the window. Rowan quickly scanned the headmaster's desk for his scroll, which, thankfully, was sitting on the top of the desk.

The Headmaster turned around and saw the faunus standing in the doorway of the elevator.

'Please, come in,' he said, waving Rowan over with the cup of coffee in his hand.

Rowan cautiously made his way across the room and under the turning cogs above his head. He looked up at them as they spun so that he would look more natural to the headmaster. Once he reached the desk, he looked back at Ozpin, who had found his was to his seat and was now staring at Rowan's eyes, as if he could use them to look into his mind and see what he was thinking.

'I haven't seen many students from Haven here just yet. It's a pleasure to finally see one Mr..?'

'Miles,' Rowan stated, not bothering to say his first name as he could see the professor was waiting for him to say it.

'Mr Miles,' Ozpin said, nodding. 'To what do I owe the pleasure of your company then?'

'Discrimination, sir. I myself am a Faunus, and coming from a school such as Haven, where we have no discrimination against any race, it is difficult to come here and see students being picked on because of their Faunus heritage.'

'Yes,' Ozpin said, nodding his head as he stood up. 'I myself am shocked this year by the amount of discrimination shown to the Faunus by some students.'

Ozpin began to walk back over to the window again, facing away from Rowan. Taking this as an opportunity, Rowan quickly pulled a small device out of his pocket with one hand, picking up the Professor's scroll with the other.

Plugging the device into the scroll, he saw the contents of the file being downloaded.

Acting as normal as he could while he waited, Rowan continued his conversation.

'It's just, I was in your cafeteria the other day and saw a full team throwing food at a single Faunus girl. I could tell that she was close to tears, and in all honesty, I wanted to attack them quite badly.'

'And why didn't you?' Ozpin said, turning around to look at the Faunus. Rowan hid the scroll behind his back and replied.

'I thought it would have been a bad image to have attacked one of your students on my first day here.'

'Of course you did and I amend you for your thinking. Violence is not the answer to everything, especially when it comes to the discrimination of the Faunus. I mourn for many of the White Fang members who believe that it will actually work and that they will get their rights through violence and fear. I only hope that someday they will realise the error of their ways.'

Casting this information aside as Rowan did not believe it, he tried to move the conversation back to what he was talking about.

'Yes, I do too. But what will you do in the meantime? How will you stop the bullying of my people in your school?'

Ozpin turned away again and Rowan took a peek at the download. It had completed and was installing onto the Professor's scroll now. He took out the device and set the scroll back down on the desk quietly, placing the device back into his pocket as Ozpin began to speak.

'Unfortunately, Mr Miles, there is not much that I can do. Being the headmaster of the school would make you think that you can control everyone, but people do not want to be controlled. I cannot force something to happen, only try to guide people indirectly to what I believe is correct through examples.'

'Spoken like a true teacher,' Rowan said.

'Indeed,' Ozpin said, turning back around again. 'I am sorry that you will have to leave empty handed for today, but thank you for approaching me about your concerns.'

'Thank you for listening,' Rowan said. 'I should get back to my team then, I said I wouldn't be too long.'

'Of course, go ahead, I won't hold you up.'

Rowan spun on his heel and walked back over to the elevator, holding his breath once more and only letting it out once the elevator was falling.

Now that he had done the tasks for Roman, he would be joining Mercury in battling against other students to measure their combat abilities. It wasn't going to be long before they moved into the second stage of the plan, and so he had little time to get as much information as possible.

This was going to be an interesting week.

* * *

**A pretty tame chapter, but it was necessary so that things wouldn't be too confusing when s*** starts to hit the fan later on.**

**Rowan felt a bit bland to me, but I had to get someone else to replace Roman, as he can't exactly walk into Beacon, and I wanted to have a fourth team member so that it isn't reminding me that Cinder, Emerald and Mercury are a team member short.**

**Team Legion will be back in the rest of the chapters from now on, even though they should really be in all of them. Ooops….**

**I'm thinking of the next chapter being comprised of only combat. That sounds like a good idea….**


	10. Chapter 10: The Calm

**Lupis**

Lupis' most hated time of the year was coming around, and once again, he was the only one on his team that wasn't excited about the upcoming dance.

His partner had ditched him to try and find some girl that would go with him to the dance. Garris may be a great person, but as soon as girls became involved, all sense and reason is sent flying out the door.

Nathan was slightly more like Lupis, and wasn't overly excited, but still excited nonetheless. Although he had never danced at any of the dances, he was now the DJ for the third year running. He had somehow been a crowd favourite, and everybody remembered him, instantly nominating him for DJ when the time came.

His partner Eric on the other hand...

'So Lupis!' Eric called out, startling the Team Leader. 'Who are you taking with you to the dance?'

Lupis shook his head, glancing over to the glyph user. Eric had his hands under his chin, gazing at Lupis as if he was about to tell a grand adventure story. His face quickly changed to a shocked expression when Lupis replied, 'I haven't thought about it actually.'

'Why not?!' Eric exclaimed, jumping across the room with the aid of a glyph. He landed on Lupis' bed, beside his leader.

'I know that you're a bit antisocial, and you don't like dancing anyway, but this is the ONE time that you should make an exception.'

'I'm still going Eric, I just haven't planned to go with anyone.'

Eric sighed and shook his head. 'At the rate this is going, Garris is going to find someone to take with him before you!'

'Of course he will,' Lupis snapped, standing up. 'He's actually trying to get someone to go with him. I, on the other hand, am not.'

'You know, there are heaps of girls around that would love to go with you,' Nathan piped in as he walked out of the bathroom. 'I could name quite a few of them while I'm here if you want.'

'Nathan, listen. I don't need a - '

'Abupbupbupbupbupbupbup!' Eric shouted, placing his hand over Lupis' mouth. 'I think we should have a listen just so you have some options!'

He turned back to his partner. 'Go ahead Nathan.'

Nathan stuck his tongue into the side of his mouth and rolled his eyes into the back of his head, recalling the names of the various girls that he had overheard talking about wanting to go to the dance with Lupis. He looked back down and started reciting.

'Well, I remember there was Emma and Hannah from teams MNTE and HART respectively. Some chick from Haven said she wanted to see you because she didn't know very much about you and wanted to 'get to know you better' ' Nathan performed air quotes with a smirk on his face as Lupis rolled his eyes.

'Tammy from TRAP sounded like she was interested, but she's a bit weird, so I would stay clear of her. Leila from LBTN was interested, I could tell by the way she is always eyeing you up. Now that I say that, Tris was doing the same thing too.'

'That's perfect!' Eric exclaimed, finally releasing Lupis' mouth as he thrust his hands into the air. 'Why did I never see that before? You two are the perfect pair! It so bad to happen!'

Lupis shook his head, sighing loudly. Although he could not deny that he thought Tris was good looking, he refused to do anything with any of his friends, just in case things went wrong.

This time however, Lupis was sure that he wasn't going to have a say in the matter. This was confirmed when Eric grabbed his arm and started to pull him out the door.

'Come on Lupis! We have a fox to find!'

* * *

It didn't take long for the pair to find the Fox Faunus. Lupis began to suspect that they had planned this all out once Eric led him directly to the fountain, where Tris was sitting by herself on the edge of the water attraction.

They both stopped, at the other end of the courtyard. Eric pulled on Lupis' arm so that they were facing each other.

'Alright, there she is. Now what I'm going to need you to do, is too over there and ask her to the dance, you got that?' Eric said quickly, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet like an excited puppy.

'And what if I don't and just have a normal conversation instead?' Lupis replied.

'Then you don't get your weapons back,' Eric said, shrugging his shoulders calmly.

'Wait, what?'

'Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you. While we were running over here, Nathan took your weapons and hid them somewhere that only he knows where they are.'

'Are you actually serious?' Lupis asked, annoyance written across his entire face.

'Yep.'

Lupis sighed. 'So, if I ask her to the dance do I get them back or what?'

'After the dance, you will get them back, can't have you skipping out just to get away can we now?' Eric replied, a smirk on his face.

'No, I guess not,' Lupis sighed, resigning himself to the fact that he had no other option.

He turned away from his teammate and strode over to the faunus girl. Tris heard him coming, and turned her face to see him, her bright blue eyes meeting his. She gave him a smile and patted beside her, indicating for him to sit.

Lupis took the seat beside her, turning his head to look at her.

'What's up Pup?' Tris taunted, using the stupid nickname she had given him.

'Oh, nothing really. Just dealing with some blackmail and Garris. If only he wasn't so over the top about the dance he might actually get someone to go with him.'

Tris laughed softly, turning away from Lupis. She shook her head, a smile still on her face.

_Now or never I guess,_ Lupis thought to himself.

'Speaking of the dance, have you found someone to go with yet?'

Turning back to him, her smile widened even more. 'No, not yet. I'm sorta just waiting for the right person to ask me.'

_Yeah, this was definitely all planned out._

'Why do you ask Pup?'

'Well, I was kinda just wondering, whether you wouldliketogowithme?' Lupis said, running out of breath before he could complete his sentence.

Tris laughed. 'Sorry, I didn't catch that. Again please?'

Lupis sighed, taking a deep breath so he couldn't run out of air this time.

'Would you like to go to the dance with me Tris?'

Tris pretended to think about it.

'Hmm. I don't know,' she said sarcastically. 'I might have to think about that.'

Lupis scoffed and rolled his eyes. Tris leaned in closer.

'That was sarcasm, by the way.'

Lupis looked at her, 'I do know that. I'm not stupid.'

'Well...' Tris said, another smile on her face. 'Not entirely stupid at least. Maybe just a little bit.'

'I only act this way to make you feel smarter,' he retorted, the both of them smiling from the playful banter.

'Uh huh, sure you do.'

Lupis shook his head before turning back, 'So, are you going to answer me yet?'

Another smile. 'I would love to.'

'Alright then, I'll meet you outside your dorm room at 8, and we'll walk over from there.'

'I can't wait,' Tris said, standing up. 'Until then, it seems I need to find myself a dress. I hope you can at least find something respectable to wear, right?'

'I'll do my best.'

'Good, see you around Pup.'

Lupis watched her as she walked away, and was so focused on her, that he didn't notice Eric sneaking up on him.

'Yeah buddy!' he exclaimed loudly, making Lupis jump 10 feet into the air. 'I knew you could do it!'

* * *

**Cinder**

The four criminals were lying in wait in the dorm room that they had been given. There was nothing else for them to do, as they had completed all their tasks. Cinder, Emerald and Mercury had gathered all the information on the students at Beacon that they needed, and taken notes on students that showed promise.

Rowan had done odd tasks for Roman over the past two weeks, and he had sent messages back to him once he had completed tasks for him. He had recently set the hooks on the side of the cliff that would be useful during the upcoming attack. This was the last task that he had needed to perform, and so it was only a matter of time before Roman arrived with the White Fang soldiers to overrun Beacon.

They simply had to wait for the opportune moment to arrive.

'God, I hate waiting!' Mercury burst out, throwing his finished comic onto his bed. 'How can you all be so calm about just sitting here and doing nothing! It's driving me insane!'

'Patience Mercury,' Cinder said cooly. 'There is always a calm before the storm, you simply need to wait for it to hit.'

'Trust me kid,' Rowan piped in. 'You should learn to love these moments, because once we're in the thick of it, you're going to wish that you had more time in the clear weather.'

Mercury looked up at the bear faunus who was lying down on his bed, eyes closed. He had shed his black jacket due to the heat. His muscular arms and chest looked as if they were about to rip the small black undershirt of the Haven uniform any second now.

'How can you call me a kid?' Mercury inquired. 'Surely you aren't that much older than I am?'

Rowan opened one eye to look at the grey and black fighter. 'Not all faunus are like me, but some of us have a disease where our looks take longer to age. Most animals gain seven years in one human year, but some faunus gain one year of age every three years. I am one of those faunus.'

Mercury spun around to his feet, legs crossed and staring at the faunus, interested.

'So how old are you really then? You look like you're only a couple of years older than me. So what are you, like, 57?'

'Close enough. I've been around for nearly 63 years now, but I still have the physical body and abilities of a 20 year old, a 20 year old Faunus at that.'

'Huh, well, I can only hope to look as good as you do at that age,' Mercury joked.

'Please,' Emerald said, putting her scroll on the bed next to her. 'You don't look as good as him now, let alone in 43 years time.'

Mercury looked to his friend with a sad face. 'Ouch, that really hurt Em, you should know not to hurt my feelings like that.'

'I do, I just don't really care all that much.'

Cinder's scroll started beeping on the table beside her bed. She reached over and tapped the button on the side. Roman's number appeared on the screen, and she rolled her eyes. Roman had constantly been checking in with her to make sure everything was going according to plan. She flicked the screen and put the scroll to the side of her face.

'Yes Roman, what is it now?' she snapped through the scroll.

'Woa-ho-ho! Take it easy there! I was just calling in to let you know that all of us are now in position,' Roman's voice said through the device.

'Roman, the dance isn't until tomorrow night. Why are you there so early?' Cinder questioned.

'Wait, it's tomorrow?'

'Yes, it is tomorrow night Roman, the Sunday night, just like I told you when we planned this,' Cinder sighed. 'It seems that we may need to take another look at your listening skills again Roman.'

'Nonononono, that won't be necessary,' Roman quickly shouted into scroll, making Cinder lean away from the loud noise. 'Listen, I'll just tell everyone that we're going to camp out for the night.'

'Fine, do not call me again. I will tell you when to get moving Roman,' Cinder said.

Roman hung up on her, and she closed her scroll, dropping it onto the bed beside her.

'So, the idiot made another mistake huh?' Emerald joked once the scroll had hit the sheets.

'Yes, he did. Even if this goes to plan, we may need to give him a talking to once this is over.'

'I'm down for that,' Emerald smiled.

* * *

**Yang**

There wasn't much left to do to prepare for the dance tomorrow night. Both her and Weiss had set up the tables (which to Yang's disgust, some of them had those horrible doilies that Weiss insisted on having), the DJ booth and speakers and decorated the entire hall with streamers, balloons and large colour-changing lights (which was Yang's idea).

The only thing left for Yang to do now was, to find somebody to go with. She just had to find the right person. But who? Both Sun and Neptune were already going with Blake and Weiss respectively, and although she was good friends with Jaune and Ren, she just couldn't see herself going with them. And anyone from Team Cardinal was completely out of the question.

But Yang needed to go with somebody. She absolutely refused to go to the dance without someone with her.

And that was when she felt someone tap her on the shoulder.

She turned her head to see who it was, and was met with a familiar looking face.

Although Yang didn't know him very well, she remembered him from the day when Weiss got thrown around by Lupis in the sparring arena. Lupis hadn't properly introduced his team to them, but after watching Weiss get thrashed so badly, Yang did search for as much information about their team, the limited amount that she had access to at least. From her memory, she was sure that he was Lupis' partner, Garris.

'Hey, Garris right?' she said, turning so that she was facing him.

'Yeah, I'm surprised you remember me,' Garris said, rubbing the back of his neck.

'Yeah, we only really got to meet Lupis, and man, that was an interesting introduction, ya know?'

'Normally you wouldn't meet us in that way, but your teammate kinda pissed him off.'

'Why was he so upset in the first place? I mean, I know Weiss was yelling at his teammate, but don't you think he went kinda overboard?' Yang asked.

'Well, it's more that he didn't think it was fair that Weiss treated Eric that way. He only got out of the sick ward that day.'

'Why was he in the sick ward?' Yang questioned. 'It's not often that anybody has to go there.'

'Uhm, well, we were on a mission, and he kinda got impaled by a Deathstalker. Because it took us so long to get back, the venom just ate through all of his aura, so now it only takes a couple of punches to completely break through it.' Garris replied.

'Wow. That really sucks.' Yang said, understanding Lupis reaction a bit better now. 'What was he like before he got, well, impaled?'

Garris' eyes opened wide. 'Unstoppable. His aura was the strongest that any of the teachers have ever seen. Because of that, it was easy for him to continually use his glyphs in combat, and he would never tire. Trying to battle against him is a nightmare.'

'I can imagine. What sort of glyphs does he use? Weiss uses Ice Glyphs, so I was just wondering what he uses?'

'Well,' Garris started. 'He doesn't really have a single glyph type. Instead, he has a mastery over any type of glyph that he wants. Fire, Ice, Lightning, Energy, Time, Healing, you name it, he can use it. Well, he could use it before at least. He's really struggling right now.'

'That's a real shame. It would have been cool to see him when he was at his best.' Yang said, frowning. 'Now, I'm pretty sure that you didn't come over here to talk to me about your teammates. So, why did you come over to little old me?'

Garris stared at her blankly, as if he had no idea what she was saying, before his face changed as he remembered why he came over in the first place.

'Oh, yeah, right. Uh, I was just kinda wondering if you maybe kinda wanted to, uhhhh. Go to the dance with me tomorrow night?'

Yang was taken aback. Although she wanted to scream yes so that she wasn't going alone, Garris was also two years older than her, and it seemed, weird to her.

'Well, I can't deny that I am looking for someone to go with.'

Garris' eyes widened and a smile covered his face.

'But you're also a lot older than me. So it might be kind of strange.'

The smile left as quickly as it had come. Yang felt a bit bad. Maybe he had only come over to her because he had been rejected by all of the other third year students too. She was about to say something else, but Garris spoke first.

'Well, how about we make a deal then.'

Yang was intrigued. 'What kind of a deal?'

'A battle in the arena, you vs me. If I win, you can go with me, and if you win, then you can make your own choice. How about that?'

Yang hesitated. She had seen Lupis fight, and could only imagine that Garris was of equal, or better skill. She wasn't really afraid of the consequences of losing, she just didn't really want to lose. Call it a pride thing really.

'But what about a judge? You can't have a battle without someone overseeing the battle,' Yang said, wondering if she could somehow get out of it, and possibly a thrashing from Garris.

No such thing happened of course.

Garris looked around the courtyard for a few moments, before smiling and calling out, 'Hey Lupis!'

Lupis, who was walking back to the dorm rooms, froze in his place and turned to see his partner, who had his arms raise up as if he were going to give Lupis a huge hug. He started to walk over to the pair as Garris continued to talk.

'Lupis! Hey, my old buddy pal! How you doing?' Garris said cheerily.

Lupis paused in front of the two. He looked straight at Garris before saying, 'How much do you want now?'

Yang giggled at the comment, which made it seem as if Garris asked Lupis for lien frequently. Garris simply frowned at the comment, lowering his arms from their raised positions.

'That's harsh man. Do you really think that would be all that I would want from you?'

'Yes,' Lupis replied instantly, leaving no pause in the conversation.

Yang giggled again as Garris glared at his partner.

'Well, that isn't why I called you over actually.'

'A miracle,' Lupis said, throwing his arms into the air. 'Garris isn't asking for my money!'

'No, but I'm asking for your time instead.'

Now it was Lupis' turn to drop his arms and glare at his partner. 'For what?'

Garris reached over and put his hand on Yang's shoulder, pulling her closer so that she was in front of Lupis.

'We, are going to have a duel to decide something, and we want you to be the ref!'

Lupis sighed. 'Ok fine. I wasn't doing anything anyway.'

Yang could detect the sarcasm in his voice, but Garris obviously couldn't.

'Yeah! Let's go!' he said, before he shot off in the direction of the sparring arena.

Lupis shook his head, and motioned for Yang to walk with him. They headed over at a more leisurely pace. Yang decided to strike up a conversation.

'So, what were you actually going to be doing?'

Lupis glanced over at her. 'Getting a suit for the dance tomorrow actually. I don't actually own any, so I needed to get one.'

'You could just be funny and turn up in a dress instead. I'm sure that Weiss has one that you can borrow,' Yang joked.

Lupis' face twitched at the mention of her name, but it was so quick that Yang wasn't sure that it even happened. 'I highly doubt I would fit in one of them. Ms Schnee is very small, and I doubt that it would come back in one piece if I tried.'

Yang giggled at the thought of Lupis in one of Weiss' dresses, but it was ripped all over. It took a moment for her to get control of herself and continue talking.

'Why do you keep calling her Ms Schnee? You know her name, why don't you use it?'

Lupis took a second before he replied, 'Because that's what I already knew her as.'

'Wait, where do you know Weiss from?' Yang asked, surprised at his answer. Why didn't Weiss remember him if he could remember her?

She waited for a response, but it was obvious that she wasn't going to get one, so instead, they walked the rest of the way in silence.

* * *

'Alright,' Lupis called out from the bleachers. 'Standard rules apply. Battle ends when your aura is low, no fatal intentions, but do what you can to win. You got that?'

Both of the combatants nodded, and raised their fists, their weapons unfolding.

Yang was always proud of her weapons. They were simple, and easy to use. But Garris' pair of gauntlets looked like he had taken hers and simply put them on steroids.

The plating on the back was much thicker, and as he flicked them around to make sure that they were working, the backs opened up to make small shields that would deflect damage. There was a slight glow coming from inside the gauntlets, which Yang could only guess to think were containers of dust. A single barrel stuck out of his gauntlets, above his middle two knuckles, one on each gauntlet.

Yang cocked Ember Celica, loading a shell into the chamber. She settled into her usual stance, her two feet spread wide so that she had better balance, and her fists raised before her face. Garris took a similar stance, but one arm was flat in front of him, shield raised. The other was pointing at her from above the shield.

'Begin!' Lupis called out.

Yang pushed her arms behind her and shot to propel herself forwards. She raised a fist a she got closer to her opponent and forced it forwards. Garris caught it on his shield and pushed it out of the way, following the motion with a punch of his own towards her chest.

Yang batted his fist away and narrowly ducked under his other arm. The shield whistled over her head and once she was clear, jumped upwards with an uppercut. The punch missed, and Yang spun around from her failed attack and shot at Garris with the shells in her gauntlets.

Garris flicked his other arm so that both gauntlets had shields on the backs of them and blocked the shells. The force of them was still extremely powerful, and sent him backwards slightly after each block.

After a few more shots, Yang burst forwards again, jumping into the air and raising her fist to try and drop her fist ontop of his head while he was distracted with the bullets. When her fist connected however, it was with his shield and not his head.

Once her feet hit the ground, Yang threw a left hook towards his side, which was also promptly blocked. Garris threw his right arm towards her face and let loose a blast of dust as well. The connection sent Yang flying, the force of the white dust making the punch all the more powerful.

She hit the ground rolling, but soon found her way to her feet. Bursting forwards again, Yang ran towards Garris with her right fist raised. She was surprised when he lowered his arms and smiled at her.

She kept running however and plowed her fist right through his face. Literally.

Yang felt herself fall through Garris' entire body and her momentum kept her going. Yang stumbled slightly as she tried to stay upright, but felt a leg sweep hers out from under her.

Garris hit her in the back, discharging more dust as he did, sending her into the air of the arena. She heard him shoot again and saw him jumping up towards her. Yang smiled as she came up with a plan.

Once Garris was at Yang's height, he drew back his fist, ready to hit her again. Yang quickly righted herself in the air and threw a punch of her own. Their two fists connected and the force of the dust and bullets meeting each other created a small explosion between their fists and sent them both away from each other.

In the air, Yang shot behind her and burst forwards. Garris obviously didn't do much fighting in the air, so he was still flailing about.

Yang raised her fist and hit him with enough force to do damage, but keeping it low so that he would stay in her range.

She let blow after blow rain down on Garris, who was helpless to do anything. Yang could see his aura out of the corner of her eye constantly draining as she continued to pummel him.

After a few more hits, Garris was right side up, and shot both of his gauntlets skywards, propelling him towards the ground. Shock by the sudden loss of a punching bag, Yang's next punch hit nothing but air. Garris leapt back up towards her and hit her with an uppercut.

Yang went spinning backwards, but still landed on her feet regardless. Looking up, she saw that Garris was still in the air, but falling quickly. Yang burst forwards with two blasts from her gauntlets and was before Garris as he landed.

Yang let loose another flurry of attacks, all of which Garris promptly blocked.

Yang threw a punch towards his face, which he grabbed out of the air, and twisted her arm to the side and punched her repeatedly in her ribs.

She shot her gauntlet and release her arm. The force of the shot sent her arm back and she tried to hit him in the face as her arm spun around. Garris leaned slightly out of her reach so that the blow missed, and followed up with a swing towards her head.

Yang ducked under the blow, but her eyes narrowed as a single strand of hair began to fall in front of her.

Anger filled her mind and Garris stepped backs slightly as he saw her lilac eyes had turned to a bright red. She threw a heavy punch at Garris who, even though he blocked it, went sailing across the room and hit the wall, cracks spreading around from where he landed.

Yang dashed forwards, another fist at the ready. Once she was close enough, Yang thrust her fist forwards to Garris' chest.

But once again, instead of hitting Garris, Yang's fist went straight through him. Garris fell through her and landed on the floor. Yang leapt down after him, a fist primed to drop on his head. Garris raised an arm to block it, and carried through with deflecting the blow to the side.

Yang wanted to throw another attack, but felt a heavy weight on her, and realised that Garris was rolling over her. She didn't realise his intentions until it was too late.

Garris had wrapped an arm around Yang's neck, and pulled her down so that she was bent backwards, head under his arm and completely defenseless. Garris began to mercilessly punch her in the stomach repeatedly and Yang could do nothing about it.

She could see her aura levels on the screen drain quickly, as Garris was also firing the dust from inside his gauntlets as he hit her. Once her aura reached the red zone, Lupis flicked on the lights calling out, 'Enough Garris! You win!'

Garris paused in his next attack and looked up. Realising her aura was low, he let her go and helped her to stand up. Yang rubbed her stomach which was sore from the numerous hits it had just taken.

'You're a good fighter,' Garris said, patting her on the back. 'It was close enough that if you landed another hit it would have been a tie.'

Yang looked over at the screen again and saw that Garris' aura was also low, just a sliver above the red zone. She looked back over to Garris and congratulated him, even though she was annoyed that she lost.

'Yeah, you're pretty good yourself. I guess I'll see you tomorrow night then huh?'

Garris looked stunned. 'Wait, you're actually going to go through with that?'

'Uh, yeah.'

Garris face lightened up and fist pumped the air. 'Thank you so much. I'll make sure that I'm there early!'

'Well, I need to stand at the front to accept people in for the first hour, so it isn't that big a deal if you're late,' Yang informed him.

'Then I'll get there earlier so that you won't have to be bored for the whole time!' Garris said.

Yang liked that idea. 'Alright, cool. I'll see you there then!'

'Definitely!'

* * *

**I kinda enjoyed writing this one. The fighting was a bit difficult because both characters are brawlers, and I couldn't think of many things I could do to make the fight original.**

**But otherwise, if you can tell, things are going to go down soon, and I'm hoping that you will all enjoy it when it does.**

**Until then however, stay safe and adios!**


	11. Chapter 11: The Dance

**Lupis**

He knocked on team Liberty's dorm room three times before stepping back to wait for a response. For a moment there was silence, and then he heard a voice call out, 'Just a second!'

'Oooh!' a second voice called out. 'Is that Lupis at the door Tris? I can only imagine what you will get up to tonight!'

The comment was followed by a couple of loud bangs and a few squeals. Lupis heard footsteps approaching the door, which was shortly opened by his date to the dance.

Tris had found herself a short orange dress, that reach to halfway down her thighs. Her hair was tied up, but it still couldn't hold it up, as the length of her hair still reached her waist. Her blue eyes seemed even more stunning than usual, or was that just his imagination?

She wore boots similar to the ones she normally wore, but they had higher heels and didn't go quite as high up her leg as her other ones. They were the same red as her other boots too.

Once she saw that it was him, she had a look of shock on her face. She obviously wasn't expecting him to have actually found himself a suit.

He too had managed to keep to his regular colour scheme. A dark black jacket was atop a navy blue shirt. The same blue trimmed the edges of the jacket and around the cuffs of the sleeves. Black pants and shoes matched the rest of his suit, navy blue soles matching the rest of his outfit.

'Wow,' Tris said, looking him up and down.' I didn't think that you would actually find yourself a suit.'

Lupis frowned in a mocking way. 'Are you saying that you didn't trust me?'

'Maybe,' Tris said with a smile. 'You are a bit difficult to trust sometimes.'

'Name one time that I've been untrustworthy.'

Tris thought for a second, but after a few moments, she realised that there were no such times, and instead, smiled at him, letting out a small laugh. 'Alright then. You are pretty trustworthy.'

'Yeah, that's right,' Lupis nodded.

Tris smiled again. 'Do you want to come in for a minute? Liam and Yasmine are both ready to go, but Bella is still waiting for Velvet to get here.'

'Sure,' Lupis replied instantly. 'The dance doesn't actually start for another half an hour or so. I'm sure we can kill some time until then.'

Tris stood to the side of the doorway and Lupis stepped through, ducking slightly as he was tall enough so that the top of his head would always brush the top of the doorframe. When he looked up, the first thing he noticed was how tidy their dorm room was in comparison to his own. There were no clothes on the ground, all of the beds were neat and tidy and all of the teams study books were piled up neatly on their bedside tables.

_I guess that's what happens when you share a dorm room with three girls then_, Lupis thought to himself.

Tris closed the door behind him and the other three members of Liberty looked up at him. Yasmine and Liam were both sitting on the same bed and from the way they were sitting, must have been talking before he walked in. Bella was over in the corner of the room, applying the rest of her makeup.

Bella Williams had come from a rich family, which helped to explain why she was so obsessed with her personal appearance. The reason that most people were surprised when she said that she came from a rich family, was the fact that she was a faunus.

Although most faunus would take that as an insult, making it seem as if a faunus could not be rich through legitimate business, Bella seemed used to it. Bella's parents were actually human, they had always been sympathetic towards the faunus. They had been offered vast amounts of Lien to become business partners with the Schnee Dust company, and every time they had refused because of their faunus work force.

Before Bella had been adopted, she had just been another faunus that was living on the streets. Her parents had never been successful in life and so they instead looked out for her on the streets. One night, there was a bombing at a faunus only restaurant and Bella's parents had been killed. They had been out the back, taking any leftovers from the bins outside when the bomb had gone off.

The Williams family had been nearby at the time, and once they heard the explosion, they made their way over to the sound. Once they had arrived, authorities were already at the site. They happened to see a small dog faunus girl, crying in the side alleyway of the restaurant over her dead parents. Feeling sorry for the girl, they went over to her and brought her back to their home. It had taken Bella a few months to accept her new life with the Williams, but she eventually became used to the Williams, and even took their last name as her own.

Most dog faunus would have extremely golden eyes at birth, which would then shift to a darker brown as they grew older. In Bella's case however, her eyes never changed colour, and doctors simply assumed that this was due to her no longer living with a faunus family. This was only an assumption however, and they never actually discovered the true reason for why her eyes never changed.

As she grew older, she began to go to a combat school in Vale. Bella had her hair dyed purple so she would stand out in school, as many children would change their hair to their favourite colour so that the would have a certain colour scheme. It definitely worked, as she was one of the most popular people in school.

Her parents had sent her to Signal academy, where she had met Tris and Yasmine. The three of them had become great friends quickly and were even more happy when they had ended up on the same team at Beacon.

Yasmine and Tris were friends before they had gone to Beacon. They had grown up in the same apartment building, on the same floor, in the rooms next to each other. Yasmine was almost always at Tris' apartment however, as her parents were extremely abusive, and were very violent.

Yasmine's father was an alcoholic, and one night on one of his drunk rampages, he killed his wife with a knife from the kitchen. He had been taken to prison as soon as the police had arrived, and Tris' parents had legally made themselves her guardians.

Once Yasmine had joined team Liberty, she ended up becoming the partner of Liam McCall, and in the second year, had even started to date him too. The two had become inseparable since then, which to her teammates annoyance, because the two were always in each others arms.

Tris and Bella both assumed that the two got along so well because they had similar past experiences. Liam had rich parents, just like Bella, but they were the complete opposite of Bella's and hated the faunus with a passion. Liam never had that hatred, and so when his parents caught him sneaking out of the house late at night to meet a faunus girl, they forced him out of their house, saying he was a disgrace to their family. Strangely, he never found the faunus girl again.

Bella finished putting on her makeup and turned to face Lupis.

'Well, it's been a while since you were here hasn't it?'

Lupis was aware of Tris moving past him to sit down on her own bed and so he moved out of the way so that she could get through.

'Yes,' he replied. 'As I recall, it was your birthday. I left early because Ozpin wanted to speak with me and the entirety of my team proceeded to be gone for the next two months. Is that correct?'

Bella nodded. 'Tris may have been super welcoming when you got back, but don't forget that you did ditch without saying goodbye.'

'I'm sorry for that, truly, I am,' Lupis said, looking into her eyes. 'But when you are told that you are leaving immediately, there isn't much time to faff about with goodbyes.'

'One way to look at it,' Liam started. 'Is to think that if you never said goodbye, then you didn't really leave at all, right?'

Bella shrugged her shoulders. 'I guess.'

'Good,' Liam said, standing up from the bed and making his way over to Lupis. 'Because it's good that you're back.'

He stuck out his arm, and Lupis shook it instantly. He wasn't expecting Liam to pull him in for a hug however, and so when he was being embraced by his blond haired friend, he was a bit shocked, but eventually wrapped his spare arm around Liam, and patted him on the back.

'Alright, alright,' Tris said, standing up and tapping them both on the shoulders. 'Let's not forget who is taking who, OK? As much as I'm sure the both of you boys would be great dancing partners, let's just stick to who we were originally going with.'

Yasmine giggled quietly on the bed, and Lupis and Liam both blushed before unwrapping their arms from each other. Lupis tried to speak again, but was interrupted by three knocks at the door.

Tris opened it to find Velvet standing there in a light blue dress, similar to the one that Yasmine was wearing. Bella immediately stood up from the corner of the room and rushed over to the door, embracing her friend.

Velvet was obviously surprised, but replied quickly, 'That happy to see me are you?'

'Yes,' Bella said, her head still pressed against Velvet's. 'You were gone for a few weeks, and I wasn't sure if you were going to turn up at all. Your team looked so tired when you got back.'

Velvet pulled away, looking Bella in the eyes. 'Well, I'm here now. So, how about we get to this party?'

Bella nodded, looking back into the room and jerked her head, indicating that they should all go now. They all went in their pairs, Lupis and Tris following them, with Liam and Yasmine taking up the rear.

* * *

The dance was going very well, at least, for Lupis it was. He hadn't yet made a mistake on the floor, which he was extremely thankful for. He didn't want to ruin his suit with blood to make up for a mistake, and so instead, he just did his best to not screw up.

But, just like Beacon always did, strange things happened constantly throughout the night. First being the amount of students that tried to bring some form of weapon into the hall, who were all immediately thrown out by Yang, told that they were not allowed back in until they either put them back in their lockers, or their dorm rooms.

Second was when a team leader from a first year team came into the hall with a white dress on. Lupis was extremely surprised by this, but from the conversation that he and his teammate were having, he figured that it was some sort of bet that the two of them had made.

Hoping that nothing else would happen, he tried to lose himself in the dance. Tris wasn't as easily distracted as him, and she was over the strange events as soon as they happened.

'Lupis, it isn't much of a dance if you aren't focussed on the dance,' she said to him, saying it out loud as he was too tall for her to try and whisper it into his ear.

Lupis looked back at her. 'Sorry. I guess I just have a really strange feeling.'

Tris looked at him doubtfully, but he nodded at her, and she immediately believed him. For the last half hour, Lupis had started to grow an overwhelming sense of danger, but he wasn't sure why.

* * *

**Ozpin**

He was quite content with standing to the side and watching the rest of the students enjoy a night off of school work. He always enjoyed the dances that were thrown by the students, as it helped them to be teenagers again, and not warriors.

He was sure that Glynda was not enjoying herself as much as he was, seeing as she had been swept up by Ironwood as soon as he had walked through the door. He had already talked to other students who were not having as much fun as everybody else, including Ruby Rose.

Although he saw incredible potential in the girl, he also knew that she was extremely young in comparison to everybody else, and that because of that, she was not the same as everybody else in the school.

Seeing another student standing by themselves, he began to walk over to her, but stopped as his scroll starting to ring. Lifting it out of his pocket, he recognised the number as that of the police department. His pressed the answer button and held the scroll to his ear, walking outside to escape the noise of the hall.

'Ozpin speaking, how may I help you,' he spoke.

'Ah, good, I did get the correct number. I'm sorry to interrupt you Professor, I know that you must be a very busy man, but we have an issue down here at the station regarding one of your students,' the officer informed him.

Ozpin was surprised at the information. 'What do you mean by issue? What has the student done?'

There was a pause on the line before the officer spoke again. 'We caught them trying to steal from a dust shop. We have them in custody right now, but they won't say anything to any of us. We were wondering if you could come down to talk to him.'

'Of course,' Ozpin replied, watching Ironwood as he made his way out of the hall. 'Just let me get my assistant and I will be there as soon as possible.'

'Thank you professor,' the officer replied. 'Even student huntsmen are intimidating. My men were all starting to get a bit worried about why he was just sitting there doing nothing.'

'Of course officer. We will be there shortly,' Ozpin replied as he hung up on the officer. Turning around, her saw Glynda behind him. She had heard everything that had just been said and looked ready to leave.

'We should go Professor,' she said to him, already walking off towards the bulkheads. 'I'm sure they won't burn down the school in the time that we are gone.'

Ozpin froze at her words, a dark feeling passing over him, leaving as quickly as it arrived. 'I hope not.'

* * *

**Rowan**

He crouched on the rooftop, watching the headmaster and professor Goodwitch walk over towards the bulkheads. Even though they were now extremely far away from where he was, his faunus eyesight made it much easier for him to keep track of them both.

They made their way across the airfield, and into the waiting aircraft. It took a matter of minutes before it took off, making its way into Vale.

Rowan looked down at the device in his hands, waiting for the signature of the bulkhead to drop off of the range of the Beacon sensors. The red blip slowly moved further and further away, and once it did, he hit the red button on the bottom left of the panel. His faunus hearing allowed him to hear the sounds of all the defenses quickly shutting back down, and he began to work on reconfiguring the system.

Tapping on the scroll that sat on the roof next to him, he began to inform Roman of what was happening.

'The teachers are gone sir. Defenses are down. You have two minutes to get into the school grounds.'

'Hahaha, great news kiddo!' Roman laughed across the communicators. 'Now, let's really get this party started!'

* * *

**This was my least favourite, I was kinda bored writing this one. But the next one is going to be much better. For me at least.**

**Prepare your butts people, cause we aren't in Kansas any more people.**


	12. Chapter 12: The Storm

**Tris**

The night was going extremely well. She had been able to convince Eric to help her get Lupis to ask her to the dance and he had thankfully turned up. She wasn't sure what Eric had done to convince him to do it, but she didn't really want to know. She was just pleased that he had come.

Lupis had been doing his best to dance all night, even though it wasn't really his thing. He hadn't made any mistakes at all, mostly because she was the one leading their dance and would show him what to do.

She had caught small glimpses of the some other people. Eric hadn't tried to get a date to the dance and so he was up at the DJ box with Nathan, the both of them either taking turns to be DJ, or fighting over which song was going to be played.

Garris hadn't attempted to ask her to the dance. He must have finally gotten the hint that she wasn't interested in him. Instead, he was dancing near the center of the crowd with a blond-haired girl that Tris didn't know.

Velvet and Bella were both dancing nearer to the edges of the crowd, trying to not draw attention to themselves. Liam and Yasmine had been beside them a few songs ago, but they were now in the corner of the room in each others arms, hiding in the shadows so that nobody could see them.

Yep, the night was going well, amazing others would say. Tris felt as if things couldn't possibly get better, and that this was the most perfect moment in her life yet. Unfortunately however, good things don't tend to last long.

Tris was aware of Lupis started to fall over, and only brought her gaze back to him when he starting gasping loudly. Looking to him, she was shocked to see that he was bent over, one arm still around her shoulder, the other against his knee, propping him up. He looked up, and Tris was even more shocked when she saw the waterfall of blood streaming from his nose.

'Lupis! What's wrong?' she asked, trying to lift him up. He seemed out of breath, barely able to stand. He couldn't reply for a moment, instead only gasping as he tried to catch his breath. He eventually looked up at her worry in his eyes.

'We need to stop the dance! Everyone is in danger!' he wheezed, pointing to the DJ stand. 'We need to warn everyone!'

He began to limp over to the box, and Tris helped him along, but still slightly confused about what was going to happen.

'What do you mean? How are we in danger? What's going on?'

Lupis didn't stop moving, but did quickly reply, 'The White Fang! They're going to attack us all!'

His reply did nothing but spur Tris on, making her carry him faster. When they were a few meters from the box, Nathan saw Tris carrying Lupis and came dashing over to them.

'What happened to him?' he questioned the fox faunus.

'He says the White Fang is about to attack us, we need to tell everyone else!' Tris quickly replied to the warrior. Nathan nodded and rushed back over to the DJ box, stopping the music and speaking directly into a nearby microphone. People started to complain about the sudden lack of music, but quickly stopped when they heard Nathan speaking.

'Listen up people! The White Fang is coming! They're about to attack us! You need to get your equipment now! If it's in a locker, order it here now! If not, go get it, but make sure you go with someone that has a weapon! This is not a joke, we are under attack, get moving!'

People were confused at the information, but some students were more alert, punching in the launch codes for their lockers into their scrolls, directing them to come to them. In a few moments, lockers were crashing through the windows to the hall, digging into the floor and bursting open, their owners quickly retrieving their weapons.

People began to rush out of the hall, leaving in groups of two to four people to help others who had left their weapons in their dorm room.

Tris pulled her two swords out of her locker, giving the switches a couple of flicks to ensure the adjustable extender was working properly. Setting both of her blades to their maximum length, she began to look around the room to see if there was anyone she could help. Lupis immediately caught her eye, as he was arguing with Nathan.

'Nathan! Where are my swords! I need to get them to help out!'

'You need to slow down! You don't have enough energy to fight back right now! You need to wait until you are ready to fight!' Nathan replied, forcing Lupis down on a seat.

'If you tell him, I'll keep him safe until he's back into proper fighting strength,' Tris spoke up, lifting Lupis out of the seat as soon as he sat down.

Nathan gave her an annoyed look. 'He needs to rest for a bit. It isn't often that he is this tired after using his semblance, so we must still have quite a bit of time left before they get here!'

'No,' Lupis said. 'They're already here.'

Gunfire began to sound from outside the building, and the clash of metal filled the air. Nathan glanced out of a window in disbelief. White Fang members were in the nearby courtyard, outnumbering the number of students that were fighting ten to one. The students of Beacon may have the quality fighting skills, but the White Fang had the quantity in fighters, and sometimes, even the best fighters can be overwhelmed by too many enemies. Eric was an example of that whilst they were all gone.

Tris watched as Nathan turned back around towards them all.

'Fine!' he burst out. 'The swords are underneath an exterior vent on the roof of the west corner of the dormitories.'

Lupis nodded his thanks and he began to make his way out of the building, Tris close at his heels.

'Tris?' she heard Nathan call out to her. Turning back around, she looked Nathan straight in the eyes.

'Keep him safe, alright?' he instructed.

She nodded and began to make her way out the side of the building. She could hear Nathan and Eric both make their way out of one of the many shattered windows to join in on the battle.

Getting to the dormitories was easy, but getting inside and navigating through the corridors was much more difficult, as White Fang soldiers had followed other students inside, and every corridor was a battle for dominance. Tris wanted to jump in and help the other students, but she also knew that she needed to get Lupis to his weapons.

Rounding a corner, they found a group of White Fang members crowded around another student who was backed against a wall. Another student was slumped against the wall, slash marks made across their chest. Even from this distance and through the sound of combat, Tris could both see and hear that they were not breathing, and their heart was not beating.

Motioning for Lupis to stay, she rushed towards the group of faunus. One of them heard her coming, turning to face her whilst the rest continued to torment the student with slashes to her legs and arms. The one faunus that had turned to face her pulled out a gun and aimed it at her as she ran down the hall.

Tris ducked down and slid across the floor, the bullet flying over her head. Standing up, Tris ran forwards a few more steps before jumping to the wall on her right. Placing a leg against the wall, she pushed outwards, leaping towards the masked faunus.

Seeing her fly towards him, the faunus began to panic, dropping his weapon and trying to run. He wasn't fast enough however, and Tris swung one of her blades diagonally across his chest, spinning as she fell and rolling as she hit the ground.

The rest of the faunus had noticed her entrance, and turned to look at their comrade who had fallen to the floor. Tris stuck out a leg and sweeped the legs out from under a faunus. Jumping into the air, she kicked him in the chest and pinned him against the wall with her foot.

Turning to the rest of her enemies, she let loose a flurry of attacks, too quick for them to block. Their swords and guns clattered to the ground first, their bodies quickly following. She looked up at the student, motioning for her to run with a jerk of her head. Once the girl had left, Tris turned back to the faunus that she had pinned to the wall. She swung a blade around and held the tip against his neck.

'Talk, why are you attacking us?' Tris ordered.

The faunus vigorously shook his head left and right, indicating he wouldn't say a thing. Tris replied by pushing the blade slightly harder against his neck. She started to speak, but the faunus jerked his head forwards, forcing the blade to go through his neck.

Shocked, Tris let him fall to the ground. Obviously they were all instructed to not say anything if they were caught. Blood started to pool around her feet from the wound in his neck. She heard a shuffling behind her, and felt hands grab her shoulders, pulling her away from the body.

'Come on Tris,' Lupis whispered. 'We have to get into the fight. People might be dying while we waste time here.'

Tris nodded. Spinning around and marching down the corridor, heading towards the west side of the building.

They made it down a few more corridors before they heard a loud explosion, and the entire building shook. A loud shrieking sound filled the air, and suddenly the entire building was coated in flames.

Lupis grabbed Tris and jumped to the other side of the corridor. Looking back, the spot they were just in was ablaze, and they were now in one of the few spots that was not covered in flames. Tris felt something wet hit her neck, and when she turned, she realised it was just more blood coming from Lupis.

Standing back up, they rushed through the flames, patting out anything that caught onto their clothes. Lupis didn't seemed as worried about his suit getting ruined, but Tris wasn't too comfortable with burning the dress. They don't exactly cover as much skin as a suit would, and she would much rather prefer to go into battle with some decency.

The stair leading up to the higher floors were difficult to traverse, certain sections having already fallen down, others being so weak that they collapsed at the touch. Picking the strongest looking spots, the two leapt across and up the stairwell, bouncing off the walls until they were on the top floor.

Lupis had gone first, and once at the top, he put extra power into his final jump, bursting through the door, knocking it clean off of its hinges. Tris followed him closely, rolling quickly off of the door, as the metal was scalding hot due to the fire.

Looking around, Lupis had already retrieved Hesperus and Lucifer, and was swinging them around, ensuring that they were both still in good condition. Looking satisfied, he turned back to the stairwell and sighed.

Tris looked, and saw that flames had now risen up the entire building, and were pouring out of the doorway, resigning them to the fact that they would not be using it to get back down.

Tris looked back at Lupis, who had also turned to her. Just from the small look, she knew exactly what he was thinking.

'Oh, hell no!'

* * *

**Blake**

After hearing the warning about the White Fang attack, Blake felt regret. Regret that she had not taken Adam's advice when he had come to her. He had told her that even her didn't know what their aims were, but now she knew.

Torchwick was commanding the White Fang so that he could get rid of the Huntsmen and Huntresses of Beacon so that they couldn't resist against him in whatever task he was going to undertake next.

After that, it had all been a blur. She had called in her locker as well as the rest of her team. She felt sorry for the students who had not left their weapons in their lockers, as they would now have to go into the dormitories to go find them. As she pulled Gambol Shroud from the metal container, Weiss spoke to her.

'I suppose you wouldn't know anything about this?' she asked as she gave the barrel of Myrtenaster a spin. She glanced over at Blake who gave her a menacing glare.

'You know that I don't have anything to do with the White Fang Weiss,' Blake said, but quickly looked away.

Weiss looked at her as if knowing she was holding something back. 'But?'

'But if I hadn't been so rash, I might have been able to stop this before anything even happened,' Blake admitted, turning back to the heiress.

'Wait, you did know about this Blake?' Yang questioned as she unfolded her gauntlets across her hands. 'Why didn't you tell us?'

'Because I didn't actually know!' Blake yelled. 'I was told by someone that the White Fang were going to be doing something soon, but I didn't help them because I don't trust them.'

Blake could practically feel Weiss' eyes boring into the back of her head, suspicion filling the heiress' mind. Thankfully, Ruby spoke up before the girl could say anything.

'That isn't important right now guys! We need to get ready to fight them off! If they really are going to come here, then they are going to be coming in force if they want to take Beacon!'

Weiss attempted to speak up, but was interrupted by the sound of footsteps approaching the courtyard. A large mass of White Fang soldiers was making its way over to the building, the members rushing over, swords and guns raised.

'Come on guys. All we need to do is hold them back until Professor Ozpin and Professor Goodwitch get back. Whatever they were doing can't take that long, right?'

The three teammates nodded, and prepared their weapons as the crowd of soldiers made their way closer and closer. Blake was barely aware of the hundreds of other students that also had their weapons raised, ready to fight.

The initial clash between the two forces was the most scary part. Most blades went through bodies instead of being blocked or dodged, and screams filled the air from both sides. Mostly from the White Fang however.

Ruby disappeared in a flurry of petals, dashing through the enemy lines with her scythe, causing mass panic as waves of faunus fell to the ground. Ruby hadn't killed any of them, instead only hitting them with the back of her scythe, or cutting them in ways with the blade that prevented them from fighting back. Unfortunately, some of these ways included cutting some limbs in half.

Yang burst forwards with two blasts from her gauntlets and straight into the fight. Her speed and ferocity made it impossible for any of the faunus to hit her, as she would block a swing from a sword before quickly dispatching them with a couple of punches to the chest or the face.

Weiss let loose a torrent of flames, burning most of the soldiers while the rest of them jumped out of the way of the inferno. Switching dust chambers, she created a large strip of ice along the ground and sped along it, slashing and stabbing as she flew across the ground at super speeds.

Blake simply dodged and weaved her way through the combat, leaving shadow-images to confuse her opponents before she slashed them across the back or chest and moving on to the next enemy. Once she was in the battle, nothing else was important, as she only needed to protect her home.

Although the White Fang were not as efficient at taking out the students, it was difficult for the huntsmen and huntresses in training to fight back when every time they cut down one enemy, ten more filled their place. It was almost as if they were fighting a hydra that was on steroids.

Blake flipped and rolled under blades and bullets, slashing at legs and arms, crippling her enemies. A blade rushed towards her face and she cartwheeled backwards, leaving shadow-images as she continued to back away. Once she landed, she continued to slash through the faunus, making sure that she didn't kill them.

She jumped back when a blade passed by her and ended up with her back pressed against someone else. She turned around and found herself face to face with Weiss. Both girls had their weapons raised and were prepared to attack. Realising who it was, Blake spun back around and continued to battle, staying close to Weiss. The two created a small area around them that was safe from enemies, as they could hold them back.

'Checkmate?' Weiss' voice rang out through the air.

Blake turned to look at the heiress, who had also turned to see her answer. Nodding, Blake flipped backwards. As she flew through the air, she could see Weiss had ducked so that Blake could get above her. Landing, Blake dropped to the ground and swept the legs out from under a few enemies. Off balance, they were lifted into the air slightly, and Weiss spun Myrtenaster around, slashing at them as they fell to the ground.

Spinning on the ground, Blake slashed outwards, cutting gashes across the knees and thighs of multiple faunus. Weiss rolled through the air and delivered a roundhouse kick across all of the bent over enemies. Blake leapt up and placed a foot on her teammates shoulder, launching herself into the air. Quickly changing Gambol Shroud into its kusarigama form, swinging it through the air, increasing its velocity with shots from the pistol attached below the blade.

Blake aimed mostly for the weapons of their enemies, swiping them aside so that Weiss could quickly take out the enemies. As she started to fall, she swung her weapon around again, and dug the blade into the shoulder of the nearest White Fang member. Pulling herself forwards, Blake shot back towards the ground, rolling as she hit. Pulling Gambol Shroud, the blade left the faunus' shoulder, pulling him forwards so that she could hit him in the gut with her knee.

Sweeping her hand across the blade, she pulled the sheath off of her weapon, holding it in her left hand. Blocking attacks with both her sheath and blade, she flipped and rolled her way back over to Weiss, slashing and bashing the knees and ribs of any White Fang member she could.

Weiss slashed across the chests of multiple enemies, before spinning and letting loose a blast of flame from the end of her rapier. Fire engulfed their enemies, and at the other end of the courtyard, the entire dormitory building erupted in flames.

Blake spun and was momentarily blinded by the sudden light. Looking to Weiss with a questioning expression she ask, 'Did you do that?'

Weiss looked just as shocked as her. 'I don't think so.'

* * *

**Cinder**

Pleased with her handiwork, she turned away from the burning building, and began to make her way across the courtyard towards the administration area. Mercury, Emerald and Rowan were all walking behind her. The four cut through the crowd without a care, neither student nor faunus paying attention to them.

Cinder saw the person that she was looking for at the foot of the tower, sweeping his long orange hair out of his face. When he looked up and saw them approaching, he smiled and waved at the four, leaning on his cane with the other arm.

Once they were close enough, he spoke to them. 'Well, fancy meeting you four here.'

'This was supposed to be a surprise attack Roman,' Cinder replied coldly. 'How did they learn what was happening before you were halfway up the cliff?'

'Woah! I am sensing some hostility here?' Roman joked. 'Listen, how am I supposed to know? You are the only four people that were at the dance before I was there. Have you thought that one of your two adolescent buddies snitched on us all?'

'She wouldn't need to,' Mercury responded. 'Because we are both actually trustworthy, unlike you.'

Roman opened his mouth and pointed his finger at Mercury. He began to say something to the boy but Cinder quickly interrupted.

'Enough!' she snapped. 'We will deal with this later. Right now, we still have a task to complete. We did our best to take the records of all current students, but there are likely still some here that we know very little about. I have already noticed that several students are not alive. I thought I told you to keep the men under your control Roman?'

'It's not my fault that the stupid mutts couldn't follow orders!' Roman exclaimed.

'Hey!' Rowan said, pulling out his grenade launcher, twirling it around until it resembled a ball and chain. 'What was that you said about us sorry?'

'Shut it kid,' Roman replied, pointing his finger at the bear faunus. 'Listen, just go get your records and then you can choose later on from whoever didn't die here.'

'Are you kidding me?' Emerald burst out. 'We spent all this time planning this and now it's all going to be ruined because of you? Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if you were one of the casualties here!'

'Calm down Emerald!' Cinder said, extending her arm and placing her hand on Emerald's chest, holding her in place. 'We can deal with this all later!'

She turned and looked at Rowan. 'You've been to the headmaster's office already, take us there.'

Rowan nodded, starting to walk, but stopped after a few steps. Turning around, he glared at the students that had snuck up on them.

'Oh great! More kids!' Roman cried out.

'You aren't going anywhere!' threatened a blond-haired boy in a white dress as he pointed his sword at the group of criminals, the rest of his team behind him with their own weapons at the ready.

* * *

**Garris**

He was sure that the night couldn't get any crazier. Just going to the dance with someone was crazy enough, but when Lupis went up to the front and had Nathan announce the White Fang was attacking, the night became so much weirder.

He was used to some strange things at Beacon, but when he saw Jaune Arc fighting alongside Pyrrha Nikos, both of them in dresses, he couldn't help but stop and stare for a moment.

The two worked together well, the both of them defending the other with their shields as the other would attack in turn, although Jaune seemed to be doing more defending than attacking. They moved as an effective unit through the crowd, taking out multiple faunus every second.

Surely it couldn't get weirder, right?

Wrong.

When the dormitories had suddenly erupted in flames, Garris was sure that he was actually dreaming, because there was no way something like that could have happened. A quick slash across his leg quickly disproved that theory as he didn't wake up in his bed, and he went back to fighting.

And yet, it was even weirder again, as he stood in the midst of a group of White Fang soldiers, both he and all of them staring up in the air, as he watched Lupis and Tris sailing down from the roof, using Lupis' jacket as a parachute to slow their fall.

Snapping out of the trance he was under, Garris went back to dealing with the faunus. Two quick punches to one's head knocked him out. Spinning on his back foot, Garris extended his arm and slammed his fist into a faunus' jaw, rewarded with a loud crack.

The rest of the soldiers had realised he was attacking again, and slashed towards him with their blades. Dropping low, Garris ducked under the swipes and stuck his leg out, spinning around and knocking them all off of their feet.

Blasting dust from his gauntlets, Garris shot into the air. At the peak of his jump, he aimed his gauntlets at his enemies on the ground and let loose a barrage of white dust upon them. The resulting energy pushed them all deeper into the paving, knocking most of them unconscious.

Once his feet hit the ground, he began to run off to another group of faunus, but was stopped when a hand grabbed his leg. Turning around, he saw a faunus holding him with one arm, a sword in his other.

Once the sword started its journey to his leg, Garris activated his semblance, phasing through the blade. The faunus was extremely surprised, and when he looked up, he was gifted a swift jab to the face.

A soft thud came from behind him and Garris spun around, fists at the ready.

However it was only Lupis and Tris who had now landed on the ground. Lupis was covering his face with his arms as Tris pummeled him with her fists.

'You absolute idiot Lupis!' she hissed, saying a word with every strike. 'You know I'm afraid of heights!'

Garris would normally sit back and watch the show, but right now, they didn't have the time to play around.

'Hey, enough!' Garris interrupted, pulling the two apart. 'As much as you probably want to beat him up right now, can we save it until after we take care of the White Fang?'

Tris glared at him for a moment but quickly calmed down. 'Of course. I need to find the rest of my team, I haven't heard from them at all. I can't access their aura levels with my scroll right now, so I'm assuming that they have jammed all communications to any device in the school.'

'We understand,' Lupis said, cautiously lowering his arms. 'We both need to find Nathan and Eric still.'

'You won't have to look far!' a voice called out.

Spinning around, the three saw the two missing members of Team Legion rushing over towards the trio. Nathan had his double-bladed sword in his right hand, both blades changed from their original silver sheen, to a deep red.

Eric was running alongside his partner, looking slightly tired. His usually bulging pouches of dust crystals looked much emptier than usual, but still looked full nonetheless. The symbols on his shirt were glowing furiously, which gave Garris a sense of hope. The brightness of the symbols varied in regards to how much power Eric could use or was using at the time, and from the luminosity of them at that moment, he had a lot of it.

'Feeling slightly better are you Eric?' Garris asked the green-haired boy. 'Maybe all we need to get you ready for battle is to get the White Fang to attack you with hundreds of their soldiers.'

Eric glared at Garris. 'There's more than hundreds of them here Garris, this is a full out attack on Beacon.'

Garris shrugged his shoulders. 'Meh, hundreds, thousands, same difference.'

'That's not important right now. We know how all of this happened,' Tris cut in.

The rest of the team looked over to both her and Lupis.

'How?' Eric questioned.

'When we jumped off of the roof, I saw three groups of students near the administration building fighting each other. I recognised two of the teams, but the third I didn't know,' Lupis said to the group.

'The two I recognised were from Beacon, teams RWBY and Juniper. The third team I've never seen before, but I know that they somehow organised all of this.'

'And you know that how?' Nathan asked.

'Good point,' Garris added, looking at his leader.

'Because, they were fighting alongside Roman Torchwick,' Tris finished for him.

Garris was extremely surprised when he heard the criminal's name come from her mouth, and from the looks on Nathan and Eric's faces, they felt the same way.

'Wait, Roman Torchwick is working with the White Fang?' Nathan questioned. 'How did he get control over them?'

'I don't know,' Lupis said. 'But we need to get over there quickly. From what we saw, Roman and his group were throwing those first years around.'

'You need to go help them then,' Tris said. 'I'm going to go find the rest of Liberty, and we will try to take care of the rest of the White Fang.'

'Alright, good luck Tris,' Lupis said to the fox.

'You too Pup,' she replied, before rushing away into the battle in search of her team.

Lupis looked back to his team. 'Ok, let's go!'

'Right behind you, Pup,' Garris replied smugly.

'Shut up!'

* * *

**Ruby**

When she had heard the incredibly loud, girlish scream that could only be associated with Jaune, Ruby knew that something bad was happening to the leader of Team Juniper. She quickly rounded up the rest of her team, and they made their way through the crowd of students and faunus.

When they had reached the administration building, where Ruby had heard Jaune's scream emanate from, they all saw why.

Each member of the team was engaged in a battle of their own, engaged in combat with one of the students from Haven. Except the bear faunus Rowan was not with them, and instead Roman Torchwick was fighting in his place.

The criminal was in combat with Jaune, and was on the winning side of the battle. Jaune looked beat up, his white dress singed in multiple places, burn marks across his arms and legs. Roman's cane wasn't as sharp as Jaune's blade, but he had more control and skill when it came to offense.

Pyrrha was deep in combat with Emerald, neither of them letting up, alternating between offense and defence. Pyrrha would jab at Emerald with Milo in its Xiphos form before raising Akouo to block a counterattack from Emerald after she deflected the jab. The two continued to exchange blows back and forth, neither of them landing a blow on the other.

Nora, usually extremely effective in combat, was having difficulty taking down Mercury, as he was able to dodge her attacks before reacting with a kick to a random part of her body. From the bruises on her legs, arms and face, Ruby assumed that he had kicked her more than one time. Magnhild was in its grenade launcher form, as Mercury was too close for its hammer for to be effective. She tried to deflect kicks with the gun, or knock him off balance with random swings of her weapon, but he was able to stay out of the way of them all.

And Ren was exchanging blows with Cinder, unfortunately taking more than giving them out, her twin blades more effective than the small blades at the ends of his stormflowers, and her use of fire dust made it difficult for him to react to attacks. Ren struggled to block the blades when he was also trying to avoid blasts of flame.

Team RWBY had joined in the fight quickly, but even with their added help, they were unable to aid Team Juniper, the four criminals were simply much better than the eight students when it came to combat. They were much more experienced, due to them likely having been in combat often when it came to their line of work.

Ruby jumped in with Ren, using her scythe to drive Cinder back so that she couldn't attack the boy so frequently, but this simply resulted in her using fire dust more often, making it difficult for the two to fight back at all.

Weiss darted in to assist Pyrrha, and the both of them began to make progress against Emerald, until one of Emerald's blade cut along Pyrrha's back. Her blades were not made of regular metals, and so as a result, Pyrrha was unable to use her semblance to deflect any of her blows. After the strike, Pyrrha found it difficult to block any more attacks, as the cut was across her left shoulder, which made it painful for her to move her left arm. By herself, Weiss found it difficult to continue attacking the girl, as she began to attack with a faster ferocity, slashing Weiss across her arms and legs frequently.

Jaune was still just as useless as before, Blake having to do most of the work against Roman. The criminal seemed to find it hilarious to be fighting her once more, and laughed often as he blocked blows from Gambol Shroud. No matter how many times Blake darted around him, he seemed to be able to predict where she would be, and could either crack her until one of Emerald's blade cut along Pyrrha's back. Her blades were not made of regular metals, and so as a result, Pyrrha was unable to use her semblance to deflect any of her blows. After the strike, Pyrrha found it difficult to block any more attacks, as the cut was across her left shoulder, which made it painful for her to move her left arm. By herself, Weiss found it difficult to continue attacking the girl, as she began to attack with a faster ferocity, slashing Weiss across her arms and legs frequently.

Jaune was still just as useless as before, Blake having to do most of the work against Roman. The criminal seemed to find it hilarious to be fighting her once more, and laughed often as he blocked blows from Gambol Shroud. No matter how many times Blake darted around him, he seemed to be able to predict where she would be, and could crack her across the body with his cane whenever it was impossible for her to deflect the attack.

Yang tried to help Nora in her combat with Mercury, but the grey-haired boy was able to deflect both of their attacks still, his speed much faster than either of them, and he was able to increase it even faster with the propulsion of his boots. Although he didn't land many kicks on Yang, he was able to knock her back and deal more damage to Nora, who was struggling to stay up.

After that, it wasn't much longer before they all began to fall over one at a time. Nora was first, and quickly followed by Pyrrha, the two simply unable to continue due to the pain of the battles. Jaune was dealt with after a blow the head with the end of Roman's cane, Blake following shortly as he let loose a blast at her feet, leaving her curled in a ball to try and escape the pain.

Ren went down when Cinder leapt backwards and started to shoot arrows at him and Ruby. After catching three with his shoulders and chest, he fell on his back, arrows sticking upright, blood pouring from the wounds.

Once Pyrrha had fallen, Weiss struggled to keep her blade in front of both of Emerald's blades, which resulted in her getting hit more often than usual. Once her arms and legs were littered with cuts, she fell to her knees, unable to stand anymore. Emerald kicked her aside, and Weiss fell backwards, curled up.

Yang started losing her fight once Mercury put all the effort into taking her out. Kicks would hit her knees, weakening her before he let another one loose at her stomach. Once she was bent over, he performed a backflip, catching her in the jaw, and sending her flying. It wasn't long before Ruby fell next to her sister, the right side of her dress burnt from a devastating fire attack that Cinder had set upon her.

Ruby struggled to stand again, wanting to fight back.

And then the hand touched her shoulder.

'Where is Rowan?' a voice asked her.

Ruby struggled to remember. Once they had arrived, she hadn't actually seen Rowan at all. He hadn't been there when they started to fight.

'In the tower,' gasped Ren.

Ruby felt a bag get pressed into her hand.

'Listen to me. In this bag is plenty enough crystals of healing dust. You need to heal everybody up, and go after Rowan.'

'What about them?' Ruby asked, her vision clearing as she pointed towards Cinder and the rest of her allies. Looking back, she saw Lupis staring at her, his blue and yellow eyes filled with concern.

'Don't worry, we can take care of them.'

She watched him stand up and walk towards the criminals, the rest of his team in tow. They began to spread out, each of them heading to a criminal each.

Ruby stood slowly, making her way around to each of her friends, snapping a healing crystal over their mouths and wounds until they were all standing.

'We need to get inside, now!' Ruby said to them. Rushing inside, she took one last look back at team Legion. They were all deep in combat, but she knew that she couldn't help them now. All she could do, is try to stop Rowan in regards to whatever he was up to.

* * *

**The finale is coming up soon! I don't know about you, but I'm kind of excited to get that out. There is going to be much more fighting until then, and it's all going to be insane. **

**Until then however, I hope you liked this one, it was a bit light with combat, but that will soon change. Take care guys!**


	13. Chapter 13: A Third Party

**Lupis**

He back flipped across the concrete ground of the courtyard, ducking beneath the dust-infused bullet shot from Roman's cane. Once his feet hit the ground, he sprung upwards into the air, narrowly avoiding the second shot that landed on the ground where his feet were a few seconds before. His eyes darted to look for his foe. He saw Roman lifting his cane, aiming for Lupis in the air. Flicking his wrist, Lupis wrapped his whip around the end of Roman's cane, and pulled.

Unfortunately, the criminal had a tight grip, and instead of disarming Roman, Lupis was pulled towards him. Roman pulled his cane back, winding up a swing for Lupis' head. Leaning backwards, Lupis barely passed under the cane.

Once he was out of immediate danger, Lupis dug the blade in his other hand into the ground. He stopped dead as he slid across the ground, and flipped backwards, kicking against Roman's back.

Once back on his feet, Lupis spun around, and saw Roman staggering to his own. Dashing forwards, Lupis spun the whip in his right hand until it converted back to its sword form. Turning his blades horizontally, he slashed at Roman, but the attack was blocked by the criminal.

Pulling one arm back, Lupis slammed his sword forwards again, the impact against the cane pushing Roman back. Dashing forwards, Lupis swung his blades around in a frenzy, pushing Roman backwards who was desperately blocking the slashes of the student.

Crossing his swords in an X-shape, Lupis cut outwards at head height, which Roman ducked beneath. Lupis was aware of Roman flipping his cane around so that he was holding the barrel end of the cane.

Roman wrapped the hooked end of his cane around Lupis forearm, pulling his arm out of the way. Lupis leant back before the attack even came, putting his free arm on the ground behind him and waited for Roman's fist to pass his face.

Once the black glove entered his field of vision, he removed his feet from the ground and put all his weight on his arm. Raising his legs, he wrapped them around Roman's neck and twisted around, throwing Roman to the ground.

Placing his feet on the ground again, Lupis spun around and kicked out at Roman, hitting him square in the face and knocking him backwards. The criminal landed on his back, aiming his cane directly at Lupis.

Lupis ran forwards as he saw the cane rise, and dived over the bullet as it flew through the air beneath him. Rolling as he landed, he flicked his wrist, turning his blade into a whip and catching Roman's arm. Pulling downwards, the whip forced Roman's arm against the ground. The force of the impact made Roman drop his cane on the ground.

Once it landed, the cane misfired, the shot heading towards his partner.

'Garris!' Lupis called out.

His partner whipped his head around for a second, looking for the danger. Upon seeing it, he pulled Mercury across so he was straight in front of Garris. Activating his semblance, the bullet passed through Garris' chest and hit Mercury's instead. The force sent Mercury flying, giving Garris a small amount of time to turn around and mouth a thank you to Lupis.

'Seriously Roman?! Who taught you how to shoot?' Mercury shouted at the criminal.

'Calm down you little punk!' Roman shouted back as he got to his feet, brushing the dirt off of his white jacket.

'You know, I'm really getting sick of you kids!' Roman shouted at Lupis from across the courtyard. 'All of you are going to these, over-the-top combat schools, and constantly getting in my way. Well, at least I can cross one of those schools off the map tonight!'

'Oh yeah? And how do you plan on doing that?' Lupis called out. 'You can barely take us four down, I doubt you will be able to take out the entire school!'

'Hahaha, who said that we were going to be destroying it?' Roman laughed. 'The White Fang is just a distraction, whereas the real threat will be here any minute now.'

'What are you talking about?' Lupis asked curiously.

'Hahaha, you'll just have to find out!' Roman said, lifting his cane and firing dust rounds towards Lupis.

He dodged out of the way of the multiple rounds, flipping and rolling past them all. The impact of the bullets against the ground caused dust to rise, and Lupis used this to his advantage, hiding inside it.

'Hahaha, ok kid. Wanna play hide and seek? Let's play!' Roman growled.

* * *

**Garris**

After giving Lupis a quick thank you, he turned around to get back to his battle with Mercury. The grey-haired boy was getting back on his feet after being hit with the misfired bullet from Roman.

'Seriously Roman?! Who taught you how to shoot?' Mercury shouted at the criminal as he gracefully made his way back to his feet.

'Calm down you little punk!' Roman shouted back.

'You know, if this is too difficult for you, you could just leave,' Garris said to his opponent.

'I don't go back on deals that I've already made. Nothing will make me leave until it's time to go,' Mercury replied, moving back into his fighting stance. He raised his arms before him, and spaced his feet out for a stronger stance.

Garris made the first move, throwing his fists behind him and letting loose a blast of dust, propelling himself forwards. Mercury responded in kind, crouching lower to the ground and propelling himself towards Garris with his boots.

Garris raised his fist as he travelled through the air, his gauntlets shifting as he charged. The metal on his right gauntlet shifted across the top of his knuckles and the back of his palm shifted into thinner pieces, before jutting outwards above his fist, forming two sharp blades above his outer knuckles. His left gauntlet expanded across the entire length of the back of the gauntlet, becoming more spread out until it resembled a circular shield with serrated edges.

Mercury's eyes narrowed as he noticed the sudden change in Garris' weaponry. Once the two were close enough, he flicked his leg upwards, knocking Garris' arm out of the way. Continuing with the spin, he carried through with a kick with his other leg, which was barely blocked by Garris' shield gauntlet.

Garris thrust his right arm towards Mercury's knee, attempting to stab through his leg. Mercury pulled his leg back and dropped to the ground, sweeping Garris' legs from under him.

Garris fell on his back, but turned it into a backwards roll, ending up on one knee, crouched in front of Mercury. The grey-haired boy leapt up to deliver a kick to Garris' face, which he blocked by raising his shield in front of him just in time. Mercury fired his boots, throwing Garris backwards again. He rolled backwards into a crouched position again, seeing Mercury leaping to deliver another kick.

Activating his semblance, Garris let the kick pass straight through his face, and the rest of Mercury followed. Garris watched Mercury's face change from wearing a look of confidence, to a look of shock. The criminal passed completely through Garris and stumbled as he hit the ground.

Garris turned around, stopping the flow of his aura that was sustaining his semblance and swung his shield around, clipping the side of Mercury's head. Going with the flow, Garris kicked out into Mercury's gut. Following the attack, he bashed his shield onto the top of Mercury's head, leaving the criminal dazed.

Bringing the shield back up, he caught Mercury's chin, lifting him into the air. Grabbing one of his boots, he pulled him closer before slamming his bladed fist into Mercury's chest. The blades didn't get past his aura, but the blast of dust that followed was enough to bury him a couple of inches into the concrete of the courtyard.

Raising his fist for another strike, he couldn't land the hit before Mercury raised his legs and wrapped them around Garris' neck. Garris felt the legs twist and tighten around his throat. He quickly activated his semblance as Mercury let loose two blasts from both of his boots. His legs shot back towards his body with the sudden loss of friction to Garris' neck, and Mercury spun back to his feet. The force that the shots produced would have easily snapped Garris' neck, and he was extremely thankful for his semblance.

Mercury quickly rushed Garris with a bicycle kick, and when all of the kicks were blocked, he dropped down to attempt to sweep Garris' feet from under him. Garris jumped into the air slightly so that he was just high enough to dodge the kick, then raised his shield as Mercury continued his attack with a spin kick, his foot colliding with Garris' shield, a shot from his boots throwing Garris backwards a small distance.

Once he had stopped sliding across the ground, Garris shifted his shield into a bladed gauntlet, just like the one on his right arm, and began to fire blasts of dust towards Mercury. The pure dust energy couldn't be blocked, so the few shots that hit Mercury instead drained on his aura levels instead, pushing him backwards slightly.

Mercury looked up at Garris and after a few moments, began to sprint towards the blue boy. Garris curled his hands into fists and slammed the tops of them together, all of the barrels of his gauntlets pointing directly at Mercury.

The barrels began to glow a bright white as the gauntlets prepared to fire the dust. Mercury leapt into the air and spun, kicking towards Garris' gauntlets and firing them at the same moment Garris fired his gauntlets, creating an explosion that made the lighting of the dormitories pale in comparison.

* * *

**Tris**

After finding her teammates, Tris had focussed on defending the school from the remaining White Fang threat.

Liam and Yasmine were fighting side by side, covering each other with their respective talents. Yasmine would use her long spear to keep most of the White Fang members at bay, none of them able to get close enough to prevent her from jabbing at them, or sweeping their feet from under them. The few that did get past her weapons reach had to deal with the strength and ferocity of Liam's battleaxe, which also happened to change out into a semi-auto shotgun when the axe-head was folded back along the shaft.

Bella was engaging in combat differently from almost every student that was in the crowd. Most of the students were in the thick of the battle, whereas Bella was staying in the high ground, firing off arrows into the crowd with perfect accuracy, not missing a single target.

Although she always carried a set of lethal arrows, she also had a set of non-lethal arrows, such as ones that exploded like a flash bang when it hit its target, arrows coated with sleep-inducing poisons and various arrows with small cuts of a dust crystal in the point, such as electrical and ice.

After the school dormitories had been set on fire, Bella had chosen to leap down from the roof of the hall, instead balancing on light posts or leaping from tree branches, firing arrows all the while.

Unfortunately, the high ground that was available for use began to run even lower as the trees in the courtyard caught fire, leaving Bella with even less options. Eventually, she had to abandon the idea of high ground, jumping down to ground level with everybody else, and engaging the White Fang with her bow, and the detachable knife that was strapped to the top limb of the bow. When the opportunity presented itself, she used an arrow to take out some more of the faunus. Although she did her best to pick up the arrows she had shot, she was running out of them much faster than she could replace them.

It was a fight for survival for every student in the school Tris realised, as she stabbed a leopard faunus through the knee, then batting him in the back of the head with the hilt of her sword, knocking him out cold.

Bringing her left sword out of the faunus' knee, she raised it over her head and blocked an axe from caving her head in. Slicing her right blade across his stomach twice, she kicked out at the wound, knocking him over.

Her faunus hearing helped her to hear any White Fang soldiers that were heading her way, and when she heard the sound of five pairs of footsteps rushing towards her, she spun around, blades at the ready.

Two of the soldiers were cheetah faunus, gleaming knives in each of their hands. The only difference that Tris could make out between the two of them, was that one of them had knifes with serrated edges, and the other had blades that looked as if they were wrapped in barbed wire.

A tiger faunus had knuckledusters in both hand, modified so that they had four long claws protruding outwards from above each knuckle in his hand. The blades were made of a bronze looking metal, with silver streaks lining the blades. The claws were curved downwards, and were serrated along the middle of the blade. The most unsettling part, was that the blades were also tinted with a dark red, the blood of a student, and possible more.

Two wolf faunus' led the group upon Tris, the both of them with evil glares in their eyes. One of the faunus had a hatchet in each hand, the handles shorter than usual so that they were easy to wield with one hand. The other was much larger than the other, both in height and in muscle build. He had a large battle axe in his hands, the blades gleaming with blood.

The two cheetah faunus got to Tris first as they were the fastest of the group. The one closest to her began to slash her daggers towards Tris, who had to dodge all of them as the cheetah faunus was too close for Tris to use her swords to block them.

The second cheetah faunus arrived, and Tris had to dodge two sets of knives. Dodging from side to side and back and forth, Tris managed to duck below a swipe from one of the faunus and sweep the legs out from both of them. Standing back up, Tris kicked one of them into the other, leaving them in a heap on the ground.

A loud growl filled Tris' ears as the tiger faunus approached her, swinging his claws at her arm. Tris brought her left blade up to block the swipe, struggling to keep the claws off of her due to his strength. Seeing the wolves approaching, Tris ducked backwards, letting the large battle axe pass over her face and into the chest of the tiger faunus.

Tris kicked upwards, her foot connecting with the wolf faunus jaw, and sending him staggering a few steps backwards. Following her kick, Tris spun in the air and kicked at the tiger faunus too. He blocked the kick with the back of his arm, and Tris quickly pulled her leg away as he tried to slash it apart with his claws.

Spinning around, Tris dropped to sweep his legs, but the tiger faunus had learnt that lesson and jumped over her leg as it came past. Tris raised her swords as he threw a fist at her, a very dangerous fist with razor sharp claws at the end of it. Using both blades to hold up the one claw, Tris had to divert one blade to the other set of claws as he tried to swing at her exposed side.

Fighting to push him back, Tris' arms slowly moved back as his strength began to overpower her. The wolf faunus with the two hatchets rushed over to them.

'Heads up Tiggy!' he shouted out as he leapt into the air, feets pointing towards Tris.

Instead however, his feet connected with the handle of the battle axe that was embedded in the tiger faunus' chest. The handle continued forwards and hit Tris' ribs, resulting with a cracking sound. Tris screamed out, and stumbled backwards.

The tiger faunus attempted to use this moment of weakness to his advantage, swinging his claws towards her face. Leaning back slightly, Tris let the attack pass her, before wrapping her right arm around his wrist. Shifting her left blade into a short dagger, Tris pulled her arm back before stabbing the small knife into his elbow, twisting it around.

Pulling out the dagger and letting go of his wrist, Tris ducked down under the attack from his good arm, sweeping his right leg as she moved, and thrusting her sword through his left shoulder. Extending the knife back into a sword, Tris held up her blade as two hatchets dropped down on her, the heads of the blades trying to pull her sword downwards.

Pulling her sword out of the tiger faunus, Tris slashed across the wolf's knees, bringing him to the ground. Spinning out of the way of the wolf with the battle axe, Tris dodged a strike that left the axe slightly embedded in the concrete of the courtyard. Jumping up, she pushed one foot down on the handle of the axe, putting some aura into her next jump, pushing the axe even deeper into the ground.

Placing her next foot on the kneeling wolf's shoulder, Tris pushed off of him, spinning back around and kicking the bigger faunus in the neck. Tris also put some aura into this kick due to the size of the soldier, and from the resulting snap, it sounded as if she had broken his neck.

Tris swept her swords across her chest as a knife was thrown towards her, and she deflected it to the side. Seeing one of the cheetah faunus preparing to throw a knife at her, Tris rolled early on purpose so that she was in front of the smaller wolf. When the dagger was thrown, she dodged out of the way, and from the sound of it, the knife found its mark in the wolf faunus.

The other cheetah had made her way up to Tris, and began to slash her daggers at Tris. Dodging the blades, Tris backed up until she was closer to the faunus with the knife sticking out of his neck. Activating the dust in her sword, Tris stabbed the blade into the concrete, the increased impact created by the dust helping it dig into the concrete more easily.

Reaching behind her, Tris pulled out the barbed knife and flipped over the wolf's dead body. As she turned in the air, she activated her semblance. She was now able to see the changes in the wind much more easily, and was able to calculate where she would need to aim and how much power to put in the throw.

In the air, she aimed the dagger and threw it at her blade. The dust that was powering the blade forced the dagger to bounce off, and flinging its way into the back of the cheetah's head. Tris deactivated her semblance, a small trickle of blood making its way out of her nose. Her semblance was useful for many things, tracking, sensing differences in the environment, and being able to make calculations from these differences that could help her in combat. The downside however, was that her aura didn't feed her semblance, her own energy did.

Tris was a rare case. It wasn't often that people were born where they were unable to sustain their semblance with aura. Instead they used their energy, which made it easier for them to keep a healthy aura in combat, but they would also get tired more quickly depending on how often they used their semblance.

Enraged, the other cheetah let out a growl and charged towards Tris. Ripping Tris' blade from the ground, the cheetah slashed downwards with the blade, which Tris blocked with her own. Activating the impact dust in her sword, the clash was less severe on Tris' arms. Pushing the cheetah's blade to the side, Tris forced both of the blades into the ground. Reaching over with one hand, she grabbed the back of the cheetah's head, and slammed her head forwards into the hilt of her sword. Once she let go, the woman fell to the ground limply.

Spinning around, Tris looked around for the rest of Team Liberty. The other three were in a group together, amidst a large crowd of White Fang soldiers. Ripping her swords from the ground, Tris made her way over to the three, slashing at the knees and arms of anybody who was in her way.

Once she was beside her team, she looked to Liam. 'As our leader, do you have any plan as to how we can help any better?'

'I was waiting for you to get over here actually,' Liam replied. 'How does operation fox jump sound right about now?'

Tris sighed. 'You know I don't like heights Liam.'

'Oh come on, we won't launch you too high, right Yasmine?'

Yasmine looked over with a grin. 'Of course not.'

Tris sighed again. 'I am so going to regret this.'

Folding her swords back against the insides of her arms, Tris turned to face Yasmine. Yasmine had stuck her spear in the ground at an angle so that it was sticking out of the ground at a 45° angle. Tris leapt into the air and onto the end of the spear. Liam pulled on the end of the spear, bending it until it was flush with the ground.

'You ready Tris?' Liam whispered in her ear.

'Let's just get this over with!' Tris angrily replied.

'As you wish,' Liam said, letting go of the end of the spear, sending Tris flying up into the air. As she began to rise, Bella shot an arrow after her, a rope trailing behind it. Tris caught the arrow in the air and wrapped the rope around her waist. Once she reached the peak of her flight, she activated the dust in her swords, pointing them towards the ground as she began to plummet back down again.

Dust began to trail from her swords around her as she fell, giving her the image of a falling comet. The rest of the team pulled on the rope, increasing the speed of which Tris fell. Tris fell for a few more seconds before hitting the ground, plunging her blades into the concrete. The resulting impact of the dust mixed with the height of her fall created a large explosion in the midst of the White Fang soldiers, sending dust, debris and bodies flying through the air.

Once the dust cleared, all that could be seen was Tris standing by herself in a crater in the courtyard.

'You owe me a drink Liam!' she called out to her leader.

* * *

**Ruby**

Once they had made their way inside the building, the first thing that had hit the eight of them was the smell. Then, it was the bodies that were scattered across the entry hall. The most disturbing part was that there were large chunks missing from their bodies. Some of the staff had head wounds, but the wounds were described as half of their faces ripped off, some of them could be seen on the floor nearby the body.

Yang covered Ruby's eyes, but it was too late, she had already seen the damage that Rowan had caused. Ruby did her best to shake the image from her mind, and when Yang removed her hand, Ruby looked at the roof instead. Yang guided her through the hall, ensuring that she didn't step on any of the bodies that scattered the room.

'How could somebody do something like this?' Pyrrha questioned, trying to take the attention away from Jaune who was retching in the corner of the room.

'Because they've been twisted into something evil by the leader of the White Fang,' Blake said sadly. 'He's become something so dark, that whatever happens to another life doesn't even phase his conscience.'

'That must take a lot of work to make someone be like that,' Yang said, guiding her sister out of the room.

'Actually, it is quite easy to do something like this when you've lived my life,' Rowan called out from a balcony on the third floor.

The eight of them raised their weapons, some of them with more difficulty than the others and pointed them at Rowan.

'What are you doing?' Weiss called out. 'What does the White Fang have to gain from doing this?'

'The White Fang? Hahahah!' Rowan laughed. 'The White Fang has no real goals. Torchwick on the other hand, he has a much better strategy than that stupid Adam Taurus! Now, as much as I would love to reveal to you all our plans like every other idiotic mastermind would, but I still have one last job to do. Goodbye kids.'

With that, Rowan turned away from them all, walking further into the third floor.

'What are we waiting for?' Yang yelled out. 'Let's go get him!'

'Wait!' Jaune called out as Yang prepared to launch herself up to the third floor.

'What Jaune?' Yang questioned.

'He's been in here way too long to have just been waiting up there for us to get in here.' Jaune reasoned. 'He must have been doing something else on one of these three floors before we got here, otherwise he would already be somewhere else!'

'Jaune's right,' Ruby agreed. 'I don't know what he was doing the whole time, but it must have been something bad. Four of us should go after Rowan, and the other four should look around for whatever he did here.'

'Good plan,' Jaune said. 'We will stay here to look for whatever he did, and you all go catch him.'

'Ok,' Ruby said, nodding to Jaune. 'Good luck.'

'You too,' Jaune said, leading his team into a side corridor with the rest of his team, leaving in search of whatever Rowan had been doing.

Ruby looked at the rest of her team. 'Let's get going guys!'

Leaping up, Ruby propelled herself upwards with a shot from Crescent Rose, ascending to the third floor, Yang following in a similar fashion with Ember Celica. Blake and Weiss ascended more gracefully, Weiss using her air steps and Blake using Gambol Shroud's kusarigama form, pulling herself up to the balcony.

Once they were all together again, they began to rush through the hallways in the formation that Ruby had set for them earlier in the term. Blake was at the front so that she could use her faunus hearing to its full ability, using it so that she could hear if Rowan was waiting nearby for them, trying to ambush them. Yang covered the rear, and Weiss and Ruby stayed in the middle so that they would easily be able to help out either one of Yang or Blake if they were in trouble.

Rushing through the corridors, Blake led them around corners and up sets of stairs. 'I can hear him a couple of floors up,' she said to them.

Eventually they reached the highest floor that the stairs could take them. The only way up now was the elevator. It was still travelling up the tower, and the four of them watched the icon to see where he stopped. The elevator icon continued to travel up the screen, eventually stopping at the top floor.

'Ozpin's office?' Weiss questioned. 'Why would he go up there?'

'I don't know,' Ruby replied. 'So why don't we go ask him?'

It took the four of them a few minutes to reach the top of the tower, and once they stepped out of the elevator, Blake immediately held an arm out in front of the rest of her team, holding a finger to her mouth, telling them to be silent. Indicating inside the room, the four of them looked inside.

In the middle of the office, Rowan was hunched over a small device that was glowing with a black light. He didn't seem to notice that they were there yet as the elevators were extremely quiet in the tower, and there wasn't any dinging noise when the door opened.

Blake crept forwards silently, the other three following her closely. They made their way through the entrance to the door before Rowan spoke to them.

'You do realise that I am a faunus right?' Rowan said as he stood, turning to face the four. 'Just because I am a bear faunus, it doesn't mean that my faunus abilities are less effective than any other faunus.'

In his left hand was the item that he had been hunched over. Now that he was facing them, Ruby could see that it looked like a small transmitter. A small antennae was attached to a spherical wire mesh container, inside the container was a glowing black sphere that seemed to pulsate with power. His right arm was hidden behind his back, hiding whatever he was holding from view.

'What are you doing here?' Weiss asked the bear faunus.

'A better question to ask, is what are you doing here without those other four students?' Rowan asked.

'I don't think you understand what is going to happen here,' Yang threatened. 'You and your friends have invaded OUR home. And now, you are going to pay for it.'

Rowan sighed. 'It's a shame that huntsmen and huntresses these days are all so aggressive. However, if it's a fight that you want, it's a fight that you will get.'

Pulling his right arm into view, the four of them could see a large flail in his hand. A spiked ball at the end of a long chain swung towards them, scraping along the floor and digging up the floor before them, spraying shards of the marble floor into their faces.

Weiss summoned a glyph in front of her and Ruby, protecting them from the shards. Yang raised her gauntlets in front of her face, marble bouncing off of her gauntlets, and Blake dashed backwards, leaving a shadow-image in her wake.

Rowan brought his flail back around for another hit, and Weiss summoned another glyph above them. However, she wasn't expecting how strong Rowan's attack was, and it almost immediately broke through the glyph, the impact leaving cracks through the glyph.

Yang cocked her gauntlets and fired shells at Rowan. Rowan held his hand up and all of the shells stopped mid-air. Pushing his hand towards Yang, the shells flew back towards her, exploding around the four of them.

Yang burst upwards out of danger, and Ruby grabbed Weiss, pulling her out of the way. Blake flipped over the explosion and threw Gambol Shroud at Rowan. Once again, he lifted his hand and Gambol Shroud stopped mid-air. Pushing backwards, he sent Gambol Shroud back towards Blake. The blade caught Blake's shoulder and sent her sprawling backwards.

Yang yelled loudly as she landed next to Rowan and began to throw punches at Rowan. The bear faunus dodged the punches nimbly before grabbing her fist out of the air and pulling her arm down, the rest of her following. Bringing his leg up, he kneed her in the face before kicking her backwards.

Ruby and Weiss dashed forwards together, slashing their respective weapons at Rowan. The bear faunus slammed the spiked ball into the floor and held his arm up, using the chain as a guard against their attacks. Weiss' rapier bounced off of the chain, but Ruby's scythe wrapped around the chain and the blade narrowly missed Rowan.

Rowan raised his hand again as Ruby fired Crescent Rose, intending to bring the blade backwards and cutting him in half. Once again however, the momentum of the scythe stopped and when Rowan pushed his arm backwards, Crescent Rose was ripped from Ruby's hands, thrown to the other side of the office.

Thrusting his hand forwards again, he wrapped his hand around Ruby's neck and lifted her off the floor. Ruby could feel him begin to tighten his grip, choking her out. He let her go quickly however as Yang burst forwards, slamming a fist into Rowans' back before upper cutting him in the jaw.

Ruby fell to the ground and gasped loudly, rubbing her throat as she saw Yang landing hits all over Rowan's body. She attempted to punch him in the knee, but he moved his leg backwards and grabbed hold of her arm, throwing her away from him. Swinging his flail towards her, the spiked ball hit the side of her head, throwing her across the room and into the wall, leaving a small crater where she landed.

Weiss darted forwards on a glyph, rapier pointed towards Rowan's chest. Rowan brought his flail back around and brought the chain around under her legs, lifting her off the ground. Swinging the flail around for another attack, Rowan brought the ball downwards onto Weiss' chest, slamming her into the ground. There was a loud crack as she landed, but Ruby couldn't be sure if it was the sound of the floor breaking, or Weiss' back. What she did know however, was that the flail had broken through Weiss' aura, and her stomach was bleeding badly.

Dashing towards Crescent Rose, Ruby was tripped as Rowan brought the flail around again, tripping her up as the chain caught her feet as she ran. Attempting to crush her like he did with Weiss, Ruby could see the ball coming down towards her, but was pulled backwards when Gambol Shroud wrapped around the chain and pulled it backwards.

Blake leapt forwards, shifting her weapon into its sword form, using both the blade and sheath to attack Rowan. The bear faunus pushed a button on the side of the handle of his weapon, and the chain retracted inside the handle, the ball being drawn to the handle until it was a mace, like Cardin's weapon.

He blocked the fast slashes and swipes that Blake made as Ruby ran to retrieve Crescent Rose. Blake brought the blade and sheath towards Rowan, which he blocked with his semblance as he raised his hand. Pulling his mace back again, he slammed the weapon into Blake's stomach, sending her backwards across the room.

Ruby dashed back towards Rowan, swinging her scythe around rapidly, making it extremely difficult for Rowan to block. Out of the corner of her eye, Ruby could see Yang loading her gauntlets again, preparing to fire at Rowan again. As she drew her arm back to shoot, Rowan ducked under a slash from Crescent Rose and bashed Ruby's legs out from under her. As Ruby fell, he caught her with his hand and threw her towards Yang. Too late, the shells left Ember Celica's barrels and hit Ruby in the air.

Ruby rolled across the ground, and was barely aware of Rowan extending his mace into a flail again, hitting Yang's jaw as he swung, sending her into the roof and knocking her out cold.

Ruby was aware of him looking around at the four of them, shaking his head. 'Such a pitiful fight.'

Turning about, he smashed through the window with his ball, exposing the office to the gale force winds that were outside the tower. He walked towards the shattered window, picking up the transmitter as he did. Once he reached the window, he swung the ball onto the roof, and used it to climb up to the top.

Ruby took a moment to regain herself, before making her way over to each of her teammates. Both Yang and Weiss were out cold, but Blake was still conscious. After spending a minute to break a healing crystal over Weiss' stomach, the two of them made their way up to the roof to confront Rowan again.

Once they reached the top, they saw him crouched at the topmost part of the tower, crouched over the transmitter again. He looked up as he heard them approach and chuckled softly.

'Maybe I underestimated how tough you are,' he said, drawing his flail again.

Ruby wanted to respond, but had to dodge out of the way as Rowan swung the ball towards them again. Ruby dashed at Rowan, drawing his attention to her by yelling loudly and swinging her scythe around quickly. Rowan retracted his weapon into its mace form and blocked Ruby's attacks. Blake waited for a second before silently attacking from behind. Rowan's faunus hearing helped him hear her coming, but with Ruby attacking her so ferociously, he was unable to stop Blake from stabbing Gambol Shroud through his shoulder. Stunned for a moment, Ruby took the opportunity to bash the side of his head with the back of Crescent Rose, rendering him unconscious.

As he collapsed, Ruby and Blake looked at each other.

'That was too easy,' Ruby said to the cat faunus. 'Why was that so easy?'

'I'm not sure,' Blake said as she rushed over to the transmitter. When Blake tried to touch it however, a force-field made of aura prevented her hands from going any closer.

'Maybe this is why,' Blake said, pulling her hands away from the transmitter. 'He used his aura up to prevent us from being able to tamper with this. But why?'

Coughing and laughter filled the air, causing the two to spin around. Rowan was already conscious again, and was staring at them, a look of pained joy on his face.

'Because, little kitty,' Rowan teased. 'I don't want you interfering with what is being transmitted. If you did, it would ruin the whole present that we planned for you all.'

* * *

**Nathan**

Nathan had been in many fights. He had fought against many opponents. Fast, slow, strong, weak, it never really mattered to him. This Emerald girl however, she was much more skilled than some fourth year students at Beacon.

But, Nathan was also extremely skilled, and no matter what she tried, he outmatched her no matter what she did. She had fluidity and speed in her attacks, but Nathan's dual bladed sword was extremely effective at blocking and attacking almost simultaneously. Emerald would stab at him with one blade and he would sweep it aside, following up with a quick slash to any exposed part of her. Sometimes she was lucky and was able to block an attack, but even when she did, his strength was much greater than hers, and she had to give up and back away from him before he could press any harder.

And due to his Phoenix-like semblance, even when she did hit him, his body would immediately heal the wound in a cloud of ash. Nathan had lost an entire limb on a mission once, and his semblance simply grew it back again.

He still had to be careful, as he wasn't sure if there were certain limitations where for all he knew, he could be killed from certain wounds. He wasn't willing to test to find out, so instead he decided to play it safe all the time, even if he automatically healed most injuries.

Sweeping Emerald's feet from under her with one blade, Nathan brought the other one down in her, which she narrowly blocked with her two swords. She averted the weapon to the side, rolling out of harms way and getting back to her feet as quickly as possible.

She had long since given up shooting at Nathan, as his semblance healed any bullet wounds that Emerald gave him. She knew that he was toying with her, testing her to see if he would get a real fight out of her any time soon.

Emerald darted forwards, swinging her blades around, attempting to land another hit on Nathan, but he blocked every hit with one of the blades on his weapon. Taking a step forwards, Nathan forced Emerald to move backward as she was unable to stand up against him easily.

An explosion rang through the courtyard, followed closely by a taunt from Roman.

'Hahaha, ok kid. Wanna play hide and seek? Let's play!'

Emerald turned around and saw the large dust cloud that had risen from the ground. She rush over and Nathan understood what she was doing, and ran after her in pursuit, hoping to stop her before she made it to the cloud.

He wasn't, as fast as her however, and she made it to the cloud first. Nathan cautiously entered the dust cloud, sword raised in front of him as he searched for his enemy.

He started to hear Emerald laughing at him as he fumbled blindly through the dust cloud. Angered, he slashed a blade towards where her laugh had coke from, but hit nothing.

'Aww, so sad. The big scary warrior can't see anything now can he?'

Nathan heard a swishing sound behind him just before a sword cut across the back of his knee, forcing him to the ground. He gritted his teeth and stood as his semblance began to kick in, repairing the damaged tissue instantly.

He began moving through the cloud again, trying to focus on anything that could tell him where Emerald was. It was difficult as there was still so much fighting happening all around him, and the sound of combat would easily drown out the sound of footsteps.

'Where am I?' Emerald called out to him from amidst the dust.

Nathan swung his sword again into the darkness around him, but still hitting nothing. All the while, Emerald continued to taunt him.

'Where am I?'

'Where am I?'

'Where am I warrior?'

'Where could I be?'

Nathan spun in circles, her voice coming from every direction, making it impossible to narrow down where she actually was.

'Where am I?' Emerald whispered into his ear.

Flipping his sword around, Nathan turned quickly and slashed horizontally, hoping he would hit solid flesh. Yet again however, he hit nothing, and was rewarded with a flurry of attacks across his back, and a slash to the back of his knee again, forcing him to the ground.

Emerald chuckled from inside the dust, laughing at his frustration. Nathan sighed, and closed his eyes, trying to focus on only her voice. He drowned out the sounds of combat from around him, and listened for only Emerald's footsteps and voice.

'You look sad, do you need to go cry?' she taunted from behind him.

Nathan didn't react, instead he stood perfectly still, waiting for the opportune moment. Emerald continued to taunt him, but between her insults, he was barely able to hear her footsteps against the shattered ground, broken shards of concrete cracking under her boots as she walked.

Once the footsteps were close enough, he waited a second longer. Emerald began to speak, but couldn't begin her sentence, as Nathan spun around before she could, and took her legs out from under her. As she fell to the ground, Nathan twirled his weapon around and began to strike downwards. He hit her with the flat side if his blade, the impact knocking her out cold.

Nathan bent over and panted.

'Stupid dust, maybe I should invest in some of those military goggles, at least I could see through dust next time.'

* * *

**Jaune**

It hadn't taken the four of them very long to find where Rowan had headed first. All they had to do was follow the trail of dead bodies, and eventually they found themselves at the doorway to a room, the door caved inwards, and barely hanging onto its hinges. A small sign on the door read 'Security Room'.

'Security? Why would he go here?' Jaune asked.

'Who knows? Let's go find out!' Nora said, dashing through the door.

'Nora, wait!' Ren called out, but his partner was already through the door. Sighing, he ran through the door, Jaune and Pyrrha following closely.

Inside the security room wasn't much different from the rest of the building. There were a few bodies strewn across the room, chunks missing from them, just like the other staff members. Blood was sprayed across the floor, walls and monitors.

'What kind of weapon could do this?' Pyrrha questioned.

'I don't know,' Jaune replied. 'But maybe we should hurry up and get back to RWBY, if he could do this, we should get back to them so that they aren't alone with him.'

'But don't we need to figure out what he did here first?' Nora called out. 'It's like a big mystery, and we need to solve it.'

'Yeah, but Ruby and – '

'I don't like mysteries,' Nora said, bringing her face close to Jaune's. 'They confuse me, and they need to be solved.'

Jaune moved back a few steps, trying to avoid the puddle of blood on the floor. 'Ok Nora. We'll see what he did here, and then get to the others, ok?'

'Yay!' Nora yelled, throwing her fist into the air.

'Alright, let's see if there's anything on any of these computers that will show us what he was up to,' Pyrrha said, wiping the blood off of a monitor before sitting down on a chair to start searching through the previous functions that had been used on it.

As there were only three monitors, Jaune and Ren sat at the other two, while Nora stood behind them all and cheered them on.

'Come on guys, I know you can do it!'

'You're all great, so work faster!'

'Come on Jaune, you're the leader, so you better get cracking!'

Sadly, Nora started to get more annoying as the three of them searched through the databases.

'Got anything Ren? Course you do, you've got it right?'

'Nora,' Ren said, turning his chair around to look at his partner.

'Yes Ren?' Nora asked, poking his nose.

'Why don't you go look around the rest of the room and let us do this in peace, ok?'

'Sure thing Ren!' Nora said, saluting her friend. 'I won't let you down!'

Nora dashed off into the back of the room, wandering through the several servers that were stacked on shelves. The room was dark already when they had entered, but now that Ren was looking that way, he saw just how big the room was.

The room extended for at least a hundred meters or so, completely filled with large shelves and racks of servers and other electrical equipment. Hopefully, it would take Nora a long time to look through it all, and give them more time in peace.

'Well, he sure knows how to cover his tracks, I can't find anything here,' Pyrrha said, scrunching up her face as she came across something that she didn't want to find. 'Unfortunately, the rest of the staff aren't so good at that.'

Closing the image, Pyrrha turned away from the screen for a second to watch Jaune and Ren as they looked for something. Ren seemed to know what he was doing, and was searching through the database extremely quickly. Jaune on the other hand, looked as if he barely knew what he was doing. He tapped the keys on the keyboard, and opened some files multiple times in the span of a minute, not even realising that he had.

'Hey guys?' Nora called out from near the back of the room.

'What is it Nora?' Ren asked.

'It kinda, maybe, almost, positively looks like there's a bomb back here.'

The three of them back at the computers froze, and spun around towards the back end of the room. Nora was standing in the aisle so they could see her, pointing behind a server rack.

'Jaune, Pyrrha, go see if you can stop the bomb,' Ren said, continuing to search through the database.

Jaune nodded and he started to jog off with Pyrrha towards the possible bomb.

'Jaune, wait!' Ren called out.

Jaune stopped and looked back. 'What is it?'

'If it is a bomb, Rowan would want to get rid of whatever data he looked at the most. Tell me the number of what the closest server, or memory unit is, and I'll see if I can find out what it is.'

Jaune nodded again, rushing off towards the two girls. Once he arrived, he could confirm that it was definitely a bomb. The large device was left in the open, all of the components exposed. A small screen was set atop the bomb, with two lights sticking out. The lit one was a bright green, the one that was off, a dark red.

'Well,' Pyrrha said. 'It's definitely a bomb.'

Jaune nodded, and tried to look for the nearest memory unit to the bomb. Spotting it, he began to look around it for its serial number. The number was written on the top of it in a black marker, 4266247926.

Jaune called out the number to Ren, who replied with a thanks, likely getting back to searching through the computer.

'We need to disarm it,' Jaune said, looking towards the bomb. 'Please tell me you guys know how to disarm a bomb.'

Looking around at his two teammates, they both shook their heads.

'I wasn't taught how to ever do something like this,' Pyrrha said. 'Bomb disarming wasn't a class that I could take at Sanctum.'

Nora laughed, rubbing the back of her neck. 'I'm more used to actually blowing things up myself.'

Jaune sighed and looked at the bomb. 'Well, it doesn't look like it is active right now, so maybe we're safe for the moment?'

The world seemed determined to screw Jaune over. As soon as the words left his mouth, the green light turned off, and the red one started to flash, a beeping noise emitting from the bomb.

'Uhh, Ren?' Jaune called out.

'Yeah?' he replied.

'I think this thing's about to blow!'

'Then let's get out of here, I found what we needed!'

Jaune looked at both Pyrrha and Nora, the two doing the same as him. Without speaking a word, the three of them took off down the aisle, desperately running to the entrance to the room, hoping not to get caught in the blast. Once they were at the front, they ran out of the doorway, where Ren was waiting around the corner.

'Guys, I found what he was looking for,' Ren said.

'What was it?' Pyrrha questioned.

'Every bit of information about every huntsmen or huntress in all of Remnant, whether they are graduated, or still at school.'

Pyrrha opened her mouth to speak again, but at that moment, the bomb exploded. They hadn't been too sure how powerful it was going to be, but as it exploded, they learnt just how powerful. The wall behind them burst towards them, and they were slammed against the opposite wall, debris slamming against them.

As they all fell to the ground, Jaune looked up, and saw that the ceiling was beginning to cave in on them. Raising his shield in a desperate attempt to block some of the wreckage, the weight of the wreckage pushed his arm down again. As the rubble began to cover him and his team, everything turned from a fiery glow, into a deep, dark, black.

* * *

**Eric**

Eric felt like one of the luckiest people in the world, considering the circumstances that were occurring around them all at that moment. When Lupis had announced that the White Fang were about to attack, he was nervous, as his aura levels were still extremely weak compared to what they used to be. But once he had begun to engage in combat, adrenaline began to kick in, giving both his energy and aura a massive boost.

And he really needed that boost when he started to fight Cinder.

He had fought people that use dust and glyphs to their advantage, and he had always come out on top because of his ability to use multiple forms of glyphs, especially ones that were more effective towards whatever his opponent would use.

So, when the dark haired girl began the battle with a blast of flames towards him, Eric sighed as he dodged to the side, rolling as he landed.

Fire glyphs were one of the more annoying glyphs as water was the one thing that would stop the inferno. And water glyphs only work if one is near water. Sadly for Eric, the fountain was not a reliable source of water, and he decided that he would try to save it for a moment where it would be necessary. Instead, he had to rely on his supply of water crystals in his various pouches.

But that wasn't the end of it.

When Cinder formed two dark blades out of air and began to slash at Eric with them, he began to realise that he may be slightly in over his head. Conjuring glyphs over the palms of his hands, Eric blocked as many swipes, jabs, slashes and cuts that he could. The few slashes that did get through his defence, he quickly healed them, changing one of his defensive glyphs into a healing one, and using its healing properties to quickly close up the wound.

Cinder swiped at him from the left, and Eric flipped backwards on his hands. Shifting both his glyphs into impact glyphs, the colour of them changed from a clear white to a violent orange. When Cinder ran to meet him again, Eric blocked both of the blades, the impact jarring her arms and sending her backwards slightly.

Increasing the power he was putting into the glyphs, he thrust his hands towards her, a large wave of energy knocking her off her feet. She rolled for a couple of meters across the ground before getting back to her feet.

She spun her swords around and connected them at the hilts, the two forming together to create a black bow. Pulling the string back, Cinder let loose a volley of arrows towards Eric.

Changing his glyphs once more, they became a soft purple. Raising his hands into the air, the arrows stopped in their flight, enveloped in a purple glow. Thrusting his arms forwards, Eric sent the arrows back towards Cinder, who barely dodged out of the way before they all exploded on impact, making a crater in the ground where Cinder stood a few seconds before.

A small pile of ice lay nearby, from the previous battle that teams RWBY and Juniper had been involved in. As Cinder walked past the ice, it began to cracked and melt, turning into a puddle of water at the ground. Seeing this gave Eric an idea.

Changing his glyphs once more to a light blue, Eric shot a large column of ice towards Cinder, who melted it instantly with flames. As she did so, he shifted his powers again, a dark blue glow coming from his hands, and he pushed his hands forwards, causing the water to gush towards Cinder, splashing across her and around her feet.

For the finale, Eric shifted the glyphs to a neon yellow, creating bolts of lightning from his hands when he aimed them at the puddle. Hitting the water, the area became electrified, and Cinder, who was standing in the middle of the water, was shocked, literally.

Sparks began to dance across her black dress, small forks of electricity flying between her and the water. Throwing her arms out, she let loose a wave of fire in all directions, evaporating the water until it was nothing but a heap of steam rising into the air.

Anger on her face, she aimed her hands towards Eric, firing flames towards the green-haired boy. Imitating her action, Eric shot bolts of lightning towards her.

The two elements met in the middle of the two, creating a large explosion of flames and lightning. The impact knocked the two fighters over, Cinder quickly rolling to her feet whilst Eric struggled to stand back up. Looking up, Eric saw Cinder summoning large quantities of fire, the flames spinning in the air and merging together. Once he was standing again, the flames had combined, creating a giant Taijitu, flames dancing across its surface. The serpent hissed at Eric and darted forwards to eat him.

Flicking his wrists, Eric switched to flames glyphs and pushed the fiery Taijitu away from him, causing the serpent to disintegrate, forming the original flames once again. Pushing his hands forwards, Eric forced the flames back to Cinder, blinding the woman.

Whilst she struggled to see him, Eric summoned the water from the fountain with one hand, preparing his other with an electrical glyph. Cinder swept the flames to the side, and they died out as there was nothing keeping them alive. Dumping the water on top of Cinder, he forced it to continually stream towards her, engulfing her in water every second. Throwing his left hand forwards, arcs of lightning shot towards her, electrocuting the water and her once more.

Cinder was overwhelmed for a second, but like before, evaporated the water with a wave of flames, turning it into steam. Firing flames towards Eric with one hand, Cinder conjured large glyphs of flames beneath his feet, a high pitched shrieking noise filling his ears as they began to charge their power.

Holding his hands up to protect him from the damage, Eric didn't notice these glyphs until it was too late. Exploding at his feet and creating large columns of fire, Eric was sent into the air, his suit severely burned.

Placing a glyph at his feet, Eric suspended himself in the air. Switching back to his purple physic glyphs, Eric raised all of the shattered concrete from the crater that the explosion had left on the ground and threw it towards Cinder.

Raising her hands again, Cinder created a wall of flames, melting the concrete shards into small grains of dust, adding more dust to the already large dust cloud nearby. Because it was a much smaller cloud, the dust cleared faster, and once it had disappeared, Cinder had vanished.

Eric looked around from his vantage point in the sky, but could not see her anywhere. She was nowhere near the courtyard that they were all fighting in, and she was nowhere else to be seen in the rest of the school.

She had simply vanished.

* * *

**Ozpin**

The holographic street lights glowed with a bright light in the night, the few amount of people creating a small amount of noise in the usually crowded, but now empty streets. Ozpin and Glynda were the two exceptions out of everyone in the street, and walked silently towards the police station.

Arriving at the blue and red building, Ozpin waved Glynda forwards, letting her through the door before him, following closely. The automatic doors closed behind them, and all the sounds from the outside world was cut off.

The attendant at the front desk looked up at the pair of them.

'Can I help you two?' she asked, looking between the two of them, unsure who she needed to be asking.

'Yes,' Ozpin replied, causing the woman to divert her eyes to him. 'An officer called me a quarter of an hour ago, saying that a student of mine has caused an issue. The officer said that they attempted to rob a dust store.'

'Give me a moment,' the attendant said, turning to her computer and beginning to look for the room the student was in.

Ozpin and Glynda waited patiently as the attendant did her job. It didn't take very long for her to respond.

'I'm sorry, but there isn't any information regarding an arrested hunter-in-training in the database,' she informed Ozpin.

Needless to say, Ozpin was extremely confused. 'I'm sorry, I don't understand. I was told that one of my students was arrested.'

'Well, there's no record of that in our database, sorry.'

Ozpin and Glynda turned to look at each other, curiosity on both of their faces. Ozpin turned back to the attendant. 'Thank you for your assistance regardless.'

'Anytime, I'm sorry that you came down here for nothing,' she replied. 'My daughter is training at Beacon, it's the school dance tonight isn't it?'

'Indeed it is,' Ozpin replied, beginning to head to the door.

'Well, I hope you get back before it's finished, it would be a shame for you to not be there.'

Ozpin froze at the sentence, mind whirring. Glynda could tell that he was thinking hard, connecting pieces of a puzzle.

'What is it sir?' she asked him.

'It was all a distraction,' he replied, quickly making his way out of the station.

'What?' Glynda asked, running after Ozpin. 'What was a distraction?'

'The call from the officer was a fake. Used only to get me out of the school while someone invaded it.'

'And how do you know this professor?' Glynda asked, pulling on his shoulder to slow him down. Ozpin stopped and spun around, facing her.

'The call was meant to get me out of the school so that there were no other huntsmen or huntresses in the academy, leaving the students defenceless.'

'But Professor Port and Oobleck are still there are they not?' Glynda questioned.

'No,' Ozpin said sadly. 'I sent them both on some missions earlier this week. They are not at the dance. The only way that whoever has invaded the school would know that, is if they had someone on the inside.'

'One of our students?' Glynda asked. 'Sir, I trust you, but doesn't this seem a little far-fetched?'

'No Glynda, not one of our students, an exchange student, possibly an entire team.'

Glynda stared at him, piecing together pieces of her own. 'Of course, an extra team from Haven arrived slightly later than the others. They were not on the list of exchange students as they were brought in late. Or maybe, they were never students to begin with!'

'Exactly,' Ozpin said, spinning around and making his way back to the airport. 'We need to get back to Beacon.'

* * *

**Lupis**

He watched Roman stumble around blindly in the dust, swinging his cane around in hopes of catching him randomly. Lupis silently flanked Roman, slowly creeping up on the criminal. As he got closer, he raised his weapon in the air. Unfortunately, Roman decided to spin around and lash his cane forwards. Lupis jumped backwards, still visible to the criminal in the close distance between the two.

Roman rapidly fired his cane at Lupis, forcing him to dodge out of the way, trying to avoid the explosive bullets. Flicking his wrist, he wrapped his whip around Roman's leg, pulling the criminal into the air. Once Roman was up, he pulled again, bringing Roman towards Lupis. Thrusting his sword forwards, Lupis attempted to stab his blade through Roman's chest, but Roman luckily deflected the jab, pushing away the blade before landing on the concrete.

Roman attempted to sweep his legs from under him, but Lupis jumped into the air, keeping above the criminal's legs. Roman stood back up, but as he got to his feet, Lupis kicked him in the chest with both feet, sending him flying backwards.

Chasing after the criminal, Lupis caught up to Roman before he had gotten back to his feet. Although they were still close together, the dust made it difficult for Roman to see the attacks that Lupis was going to make. Lupis grinned when he saw the shock on Roman's face when he realised that Lupis could see perfectly, even in the dust.

Bringing one blade diagonally across Roman's chest, Lupis also brought his other sword diagonally upwards from Roman's left hip. Roman was only able to see one sword coming, so he only blocked the upper blade with his cane, the other one slashing across his stomach, forcing Roman backwards

Lupis continued this routine constantly and it was working well, until the dust started to clear. Roman's eventually was able to see Lupis better, and he was able to block and see more attacks before they hit. Roman started to throw out more attacks, and Lupis had to be more defensive instead of relying completely on offense.

Roman swung his cane upwards and Lupis caught it with one blade, spinning around and trying to dig his second one into Roman's leg. The criminal moved out of the way quickly, whipping his cane around to hit Lupis' face.

Lupis dodged the blow, but the trickles of blood coming from his nose definitely was confusing Roman. The criminal brought out his cane again, firing a bullet at Lupis. Flipping backwards, Lupis dodged the blast, and flicked his whip at Roman's legs, pulling them from underneath him and bringing him to the ground. As he fell, he flicked his whip to hit Roman again, but it was deflected by a woman that fell from the sky and deflected the whip with a pink umbrella.

Roman stood up from behind the new woman and laughed at Lupis. 'You know kid, you're pretty good, I'll give you that. And as much as I would love to stick around and get to know you even better, I'm afraid that it's time to go. Enjoy the parting gift.'

Looking to his partner she nodded to him and bowed to Lupis. Unsure of what was happening, he flicked his whip at the pair again, but this time when she deflected his weapon, both her and Roman shattered like a window, causing Lupis to question his sanity.

Upon hearing the sound of a bulkhead flying away, Lupis looked up and saw the two in the rear window, Roman waving goodbye to him with a smile on his face.

Gritting his teeth, Lupis turned around to find the rest of his team. Eric was making his way over to Lupis, whilst Garris and Nathan were tying Mercury and Emerald up to a nearby lamp-post. Once they were satisfied with their work, they began to make their way over to Lupis as well.

'What, you guys couldn't catch your two?' Garris joked as he approached Lupis and Eric.

'We weren't taking care of the kids. Roman and Cinder are both much more skilled than either of them,' Lupis replied.

'Ahhh, don't be such a baby,' Nathan said, walking over to the group. 'Just admit that you guys aren't as superior as me and Garris.'

Garris held up his hand and Nathan gave him a hi-five without even looking.

'Whatever,' Lupis said. 'Listen, Roman said that there's a parting gift waiting for us. Do any of you have a clue as to what that could be?'

A loud bang emanated from inside the tower, fire pouring out from the entrance and any exterior windows. One of the students from before rushed out of the entrance alongside the flames, heading towards the group.

Once Ren was close enough, he immediately tried to pull Lupis towards the building.

'Come on! The rest of my team is still in there, they're stuck under a load of debris! You need to help me!'

'Calm down!' Lupis said, placing a hand on the boy's shoulder. 'We'll get them out of there.'

Looking up at Nathan and Eric, the two of them nodded and headed inside to free the rest of Team Juniper.

'Thank you,' Ren said, sitting down on the ground, resting his back against the edge of the fountain. He looked around and pointed towards the rest of the battle. 'At least the rest of the White Fang is leaving too.'

Lupis turned around and saw that any faunus soldiers that were still standing were rushing to the airport, clipping hooks onto their belts before leaping off the cliff. Students began to cheer loudly as the last few faunus left the school grounds, their weapons raised into the air.

Lupis raised his weapons above his head too and began to yell, but when he did, a loud roar sounded through the courtyard. All of the students put down their weapons and looked around for the source of the sound.

Lupis heard a loud flapping sound and looked upwards, surprised when he saw five black dots making their way towards him. As they got closer, he recognised them as the four members of Team RWBY, as well as Rowan.

They all slowed their descent before they landed, either with bullets or glyphs, landing safely on the ground. If the academy had a brain, it would have been thankful that it wasn't given any more craters.

The leader of the team rolled as she landed, quickly making her way over to Lupis. As she ran, she was pointing back to the top of the tower, screaming at the top of her voice, 'We're not done yet!'

Looking up again, Lupis saw a much larger figure in the sky. As it got closer, his eyes widened in fear.

'What the hell is that thing?' he questioned, looking at the giant grimm that had perched on top of the tower.

The beast had two large wings, each one roughly the size of the courtyard that they were standing in. A long tail with bone white spikes trailed down the side of the building, only matched by and equally long neck. The grimm had the trademark white bone mask, and glowing red eyes. The beast opened its mouth again, letting out a fiery inferno as well as its terrifying roar.

'Is that a Draak?' Garris questioned with wonder as the dragon-like grimm breathed flames into the sky.

'I think so Garris,' Lupis said.

'So that's what the transmitter was calling,' Ruby said.

'What?' Lupis asked.

'Rowan set up a transmitter on the top of the tower, and he made a force-field around it with his aura so that we couldn't deactivate it. The transmitter must have been calling this… thing.'

Lupis looked back at the grimm and could see it looking down at them, eyes glaring at the students before it leapt from the building, pulling its wings alongside its body, bombing the ground. Before it landed, it extended its wings once more, slowing its descent, but still landing with an impressive thud. The beast looked up at the small group of students before it, roaring its challenge to them.

* * *

**This chapter took me ages to write. But I enjoyed every second of it!**

**It also happens to be the longest chapter I've written yet, I think I just about doubled the last longest chapter's word count!**

**So, who's excited to see the Draak in action? I know I am!**

**But, you'll need to wait until next week, sorry :(**

**So, until then, have a great week :)**


	14. Chapter 14: The Last Stand

**Blake**

After she had tied one of her various ribbons around Rowan's hands, ensuring that he wouldn't be able to attack them anymore, Blake's attention was adverted to Yang's voice calling for both her and Ruby from inside Ozpin's office below them.

'Sounds like your sister is up,' Blake informed Ruby.

'Oh yeah, we better get down there. I need to see if Weiss is ok,' Ruby quickly replied.

The pair of them had dragged Rowan back inside, throwing him through the window before carefully lowering themselves in so that they wouldn't miss and end up falling down the tower. Once she had landed, Blake looked up and saw that Yang was bending over Weiss, occasionally shaking her shoulders to keep her awake.

The heiress' white dress was now stained with a dark red. Thankfully, the healing crystal had knitted her skin back together, but it had limitations, and none of the three were sure if there was any internal damage that had been caused by Rowan's attack.

Rushing over to her partner, Ruby fell to her knees beside her sister, putting a hand of her own on Weiss' shoulder. Blake moved closer as well, but hung back slightly to keep an eye on Rowan, just in case he tried anything funny.

'Weiss! Are you ok?' Ruby asked her friend as she shook the heiress' shoulders.

Weiss opened her eyes. She didn't need to say anything for the three of them to understand that she was thinking, '_Do I look like I'm ok?_'

'Ok, yeah, dumb question,' Ruby admitted. 'Do you think you can walk? I don't really think that we can just sit here.'

'Ruby, I don't think Weiss should move just yet,' Yang said, placing a bloody hand on her sister's shoulder. 'You may have healed her stomach, but who knows what has happened inside her body? Or if moving is going to do even more damage to her?'

'Yang, we may not have time to wait,' Blake butted in. 'I know that the best idea would be to let her rest for a second, but we can't forget that there is still an army of faunus outside!'

'You should be out there with them,' Rowan said to Blake, a grin on his face.

Blake turned to the bear faunus, glaring at him to tell him to shut up.

'Aww, come on! You didn't think that I wouldn't recognise you? I'm surprised that more people haven't Blake,' Rowan laughed.

'Shut up,' Blake said, pointing her katana towards their captive. 'I left my past behind me long ago. I had dealt with it, and I don't need you to remind me of it.'

'Of course, so sorry Ms Belladona,' Rowan replied smugly. 'I was just commenting that I was surprised you would leave us to join these three humans, even if you didn't know who you would be with at the time. Adam would be especially ashamed of you if he saw you with her.'

Rowan jerked his head towards Weiss, who was still laying on the ground. The White Fang had never been fond of the Schnee family, but Blake had made her peace with Weiss almost instantaneously after their team had been formed. Apart from the once incident when they all discovered she was a faunus.

'Don't you talk about Adam,' Blake hissed at Rowan, eyes narrowing. 'You betrayed him to help Roman!'

'And you betrayed him to save the human lives on that train, not to mention the various other human lives you have saved since you left,' Rowan retorted. 'We aren't so different you and I.'

'We are nothing alike,' Blake snapped back at him.

Rowan laughed. 'Of course, my bad. I left because Adam was a useless leader, you left because he could no longer please you, if you know what I'm – '

Rowan didn't get to speak another word as Yang had dashed across the room towards him and slammed her gauntlet into the side of his head, knocking him out cold once more.

Yang stood up and looked around. 'Sorry, but he was getting on my nerves.'

Blake was thankful that Yang had done that. She didn't like talking about Adam to begin with, but the way that Rowan had talked about him had crossed a line. She was less than pleased at the way he had made it seem they were similar, even if it had led to an obscene comment from him.

Turning away from the unconscious faunus, Blake looked back to Ruby, who was still hunched over Weiss' prone form. The blow that she had received from Rowan had definitely been extremely severe, but without moving her from where she was, there was no way to know what sort of damage had been done to her.

A rustling sound behind her startled Blake and she spun around and what she saw amazed her.

Rowan was awake again, and looking directly at her. It just seemed that they couldn't keep him down. What worried her even more was the fact that he was holding a trigger of some sort, his thumb held over the red button at the top. Once he saw her spin around, he slammed his thumb onto the button, releasing a loud click into the room.

Blake didn't need to look at her teammates to realise that both Ruby and Yang had also heard the click of the button, as she could hear their weapons spin into action. Rowan smiled at the three of them.

'Oops,' he said with a grin, dropping the trigger to the floor.

To hear the resulting explosion, one didn't need to have the super hearing of a faunus to hear the explosion. The loud boom sounded like it came from much further down the tower, likely on the ground floor, and the entire room began to shudder.

Both Ruby and Yang stumbled and fell to the floor, but Blake was able to keep herself upright throughout the tremors that shook the entire tower. A few slabs from the ceiling fell to the floor, breaking into multiple smaller pieces upon impact, but none of them were close to any of them.

Blake spun to look at the rest of her teammates.

'We don't really have much of a choice about letting Weiss rest now,' she ordered. 'Yang, you get Rowan at bring him down, I'll keep Weiss steady.'

Marching over to the heiress, Blake picked her up from the floor as gently as she could. 'Weiss? I'm going to need you to make us a few glyphs to slow our fall, ok?'

'Wait, fall?' Yang said, Rowan slung over her shoulder. 'What do you mean fall?'

Blake looked to Ruby, who immediately understood what she was meaning. Nodding, the short girl rushed towards the window before jumping out, Crescent Rose in hand.

'Ruby!' Yang called out to her sister, watching her pass beyond her field of view. Determination in her eyes, she rushed out after her sister, jumping out of the shattered window and falling out of sight.

Blake slowly made her way to the window so to not cause too much pain to Weiss, trying to keep both of them balanced as the building shook and swayed. Once they reached the window, Blake was about to leap, but was distracted when she saw a large black silhouette making its way towards the tower.

Looking sideways, Blake was hoping that it was a bulkhead with Professor Ozpin and Professor Goodwitch returning to save the day, but instead, she saw something extremely terrifying.

A dragon-like grimm was making its way towards the school, giant wings flapping loudly and its bright red eyes glowed in the darkness, like a torch in a dark room.

Classical white bone armour littered its body, complete with the usual bone mask that marked the grimm. Pointed white bones littered its back, and up the back of its neck to the base of its skull. The rims of its wings were similarly armoured, comprised entirely of the white grimm bone. Pointed shards stuck out from the knees on its four legs and similar spikes ran along the back of its tail, ending in a cluster of spikes, almost resembling Rowan's flail. The look was made complete with razor sharp teeth and claws, making the grimm look like something from a nightmare.

The thing about the grimm that made it even more terrifying, was that it was colossus in size. The Nevermore that they had fought during their initiation was tiny in comparison to this beast. The dragon-like grimm was almost ten times the size of that Nevermore.

Shaking her head to bring herself out of the shock of seeing it, she looked down and leapt out of the window, beginning her plummet to the ground. Aligning her and Weiss' bodies so that they fell quicker, Blake shot past Yang and quickly made her way towards Ruby.

Once she approached her leader, Blake pulled slightly ahead of Ruby to get her attention. Pointing her free hand towards the large grimm, Ruby spun to look at where she was pointing and saw the large beast.

'Ruby, you're the fastest of us all, you need to get down to the ground and warn everybody about that thing!' Blake called out to her leader.

Thankfully, Ruby heard her over the overwhelming sound of the wind as they fell and nodded. Aiming Crescent Rose upwards, Ruby began to shoot her weapon, flying towards the ground at speeds that would make even Doctor Oobleck jealous.

Once Ruby had passed Blake, the grimm landed on the spire of the tower and let out a loud roar, firing flames into the sky. Blake looked back quickly before quickly turning away. As Blake and Weiss fell to the ground, Blake began to talk to Weiss.

'We're getting really close now. I can't stop our fall, so you're going to have to make some glyphs to slow us down, alright?'

Weiss didn't respond.

'Weiss, did you hear me?' Blake asked again.

When she still had no response, Blake looked to the heiress, and was startled when she realised that the girl had fallen unconscious. Her eyes were closed and her long white hair whipping around furiously in the air.

'Weiss!' Blake shouted into the heiress' face. 'Weiss, you need to wake up!'

Weiss' face remained emotionless, and Blake realised that she needed a bigger push to be woken up. Immediately feeling bad about what she was about to do, Blake looked at Weiss and quickly said, 'Sorry Weiss.'

Pulling her arm back, Blake slapped Weiss' face, leaving a red mark on her cheek. The girl groaned lightly, eyes fluttering for a few seconds. Blake slapped Weiss again, and the heiress opened her eyes slowly, looking around her to figure out what was happening.

'Weiss!' Blake called out. 'Listen, you need to conjure some glyphs now, or else we are going to be marks on the courtyard in a few seconds!'

'What?' Weiss asked groggily.

'Glyphs! Now!' Blake shouted, pointing towards the ground that was rising to meet them.

Weiss seemed to respond slightly better to the sight of the ground approaching them. Extending a hand, Weiss summoned a staircase of glyphs in the air. Blake landed softly on the glyph, making sure that Weiss didn't take any force from the landing, before taking a small jump to make her way down the various glyphs.

Once the pair hit the ground, Blake ran with Weiss to a safer spot before gently laying the heiress onto the ground. Weiss' faced scrunched up as Blake rolled her back along the ground, and she let Weiss go even slower to try and lessen the pain that the heiress was feeling.

Once Weiss had her back flat to the ground, Blake stood back up and looked away, preparing to get back to the fight. Just before she took off however, Weiss talked to her.

'Blake, don't go,' she said, gasping between words, biting her lip to distract herself from the pain. 'Don't leave me alone.'

Blake hesitated, but accepted the heiress' request, sitting beside Weiss with her legs out straight in front of her, arms behinds her back to keep herself upright.

'I'm sorry Blake,' Weiss gasped.

'For what?' Blake asked Weiss, confused at her comment.

'Before I met you, I was always just like my father, with a burning passion to treat the faunus as if they were lower than humans,' Weiss confessed.

'Weiss, I know, you don't have to apologise to me about this,' Blake replied, looking away from the heiress. 'I know that the White Fang made your childhood difficult, and that's why you didn't particularly like the faunus.'

'Yes, but all it took to realise that the faunus actually aren't that bad, was when I found out about you.'

Blake said nothing, and instead kept silent so she could listen to what Weiss was saying. It was slightly difficult as the grimm had landed in the middle of the courtyard, and was eyeing up Lupis, but not yet making any moves to attack him.

'Before you, let it slip, that you were a faunus, I treated you as an equal,' Weiss started. 'But after you told us, my thoughts towards you immediately changed, all because of you being a faunus.'

'It took be those twelve hours when I was looking for you to realise that it isn't your differences in appearance that can make you evil, it's who you are that does. That's why when we found you, my attitude was so much more different towards you, because I realised that everything I had ever believed in was wrong.'

'Weiss, it's ok, really. I can understand why your feelings were that way, so you don't need to apologise,' Blake said absentmindedly, keeping her eyes trained on the face-off that was happening not that far away from them.

'I do, and that's why that after we get out of this, I'm going to do everything I can to get faunus the rights that they deserve.'

Blake was stunned by her comment, and whirled around, looking down at the heiress' paler than usual face. 'Really?'

Weiss gave a small nod, grimacing as she did, eyes barely open. 'I feel bad for what both me and my family have done against the faunus, and now, I want to do all that I can to turn it around.'

Blake wasn't normally an emotional person, but even this hit her home. Leaning down, she gave Weiss a gentle hug to show her appreciation.

'You have no idea how much that would mean Weiss,' Blake said.

Weiss didn't respond, and Blake realised after a few seconds that she could no longer hear the girl breathing. Jolting backwards, she saw that Weiss was completely immobile, and when she pressed her ear to the girl's chest, she became even more frightened when she realised that her heartbeat was barely audible, beating incredibly slowly.

'Weiss!' Blake yelled, placing her hands over the heiress' chest and pressing down multiple times. Every couple of pushes, she would lean slightly closer to Weiss' mouth to try and hear the sounds of her breathing. But no matter how much she tried, Weiss didn't breathe, and her heart completely stopped.

* * *

**Eric**

When the explosion had shot out of the tower and Ren along with it, Eric was dead sure that his teammates were, well, dead. He didn't want to make it seem as if he had no faith in the boy's teammates, but he also didn't want to give him any false hope.

It had looked bad from the outside, but on the inside, things were much worse.

Burnt and charred corpses littered the entrance hall, some of them covered with debris from the ceiling above them, and flames were burning throughout the entire room and up the walls. Smoke was filling the air, and neither he or Nathan could see through it.

Activating two fire glyphs in his palms, Eric pushed the fiery blaze away so that it was out of their paths, but sadly, he couldn't do anything about the smoke that was blocking their view. Thankfully, he was able to sense three auras a few hallways away, which meant that none of Ren's teammates were dead. But as they got closer, their chance of reaching them became less likely. Rubble and debris filled the corridors completely, and was rolling out into the entrance hall as well.

Putting as much of his aura into his hands as possible, Eric began to carve his way through the rubble with his flames, putting as much aura into them so that they were at heats that made the fire around them seem cold.

The debris melted into a thick, molten sludge that Eric would flick out of the way before the two would delve any deeper into the hallways. To conserve his aura, he only cut through parts of the rubble, judging whether cuts would make everything collapse on top of them.

The two of them gradually got closer towards the aura signatures, and once they were close enough, Eric stopped the use of his glyphs, just in case he accidentally hit one of the students. He was sure that there wouldn't be much he could do to make it up to them if he accidentally cut off one of their limbs.

Instead, the two opted for a more subtle approach. Nathan would grab hold of pieces of rubble and pull it away, placing it behind them and Eric shifted his glyphs to an orange glow, breaking the debris into several pieces with a strong hit. After a few hits, Eric broke apart a piece of rubble and beneath it was a white shield with a crescent moon symbol imprinted on it in golden paint.

'Nathan! I've found them!' Eric called out, brushing the rubble aside and pulling the boy out from under the debris. Nathan reached over and pulled the unconscious student from the debris as Eric continued to destroy any rubble that was still in the way. Once they had gotten Jaune out of the way, they saw that the other two members of his team had been beneath him, both of which were still conscious.

A girl with orange hair clambered out without aid, but the other girl didn't move, and instead stayed where she was. Eric looked over to her, about to order her to move, until he realised that she couldn't.

A large block of concrete from the upper floors had fallen on top of her right arm, and there was a small pool of blood formed around her trapped limb. Hitting the concrete with his glyphs, Eric was dismayed when he realised that he was barely cracking the stone.

Stepping back, he raised his hand at the block, preparing to fire an inferno of flames at the rubble, but his arm was quickly pulled back by Nathan.

'Are you crazy?' he yelled. 'If you melt that, it'll fall on her and burn her alive!'

Eric shook his head, amazed that he hadn't thought of that. Luckily Nathan was there, otherwise he would have just killed the poor girl. Crouching closer to the rubble, he looked around the edges to see if there was anywhere that they could lift the block off of her arm, but any edges that they could use were either flush with the floor or the gap was too small for them to fit their hands into.

Pyrrha brought her free hand to Eric's shoulder, forcing him to look at her.

'Just go. Take them, and get out of here!' she said, forcing the pain out of her voice. 'You can always come back and get me afterwards.'

As if on cue, the tower began to shudder again, and a loud cracking sounds erupted from around them. More rubble fell from the upper levels, crashing to the floor in the entrance hall. Although they couldn't tell for sure, both he and Nathan were sure that the tower wouldn't be standing for much longer.

'No,' Eric said. 'We are going to get you out of here. Just let us think of something!'

Behind them, Nora was shaking Jaune awake, and the blond haired boy was slowly coming to his senses. As he opened his eyes, he saw Pyrrha stuck under the block of concrete, and rushed over to her, almost falling over as he tried to shake himself awake.

'Pyrrha!' he called out, falling to his knees at her side. Looking around, he saw the puddle of blood that she was laying in, and connecting the pieces when he saw her trapped arm. 'Oh god no!'

'Jaune! You have to listen to me!' Pyrrha gasped, moving her hand to his shoulder. 'Get Nora out of here! There isn't anything you can do to help me!'

'No!' Jaune replied. 'I can't just leave you here Pyrrha! There has to be a way to get you out!'

Eric looked at the boy slowly, waiting a moment to decide if he should say something. Deciding that he should, he said to the boy, 'There is a way that we can get her out. But you probably won't like it.'

Jaune snapped his head to the side, looking straight at Eric. Putting both his hands on Eric's shoulders, he shook Eric back and forth. 'How? How can you get her out?'

Eric breathed in deeply before replying. Looking up at Jaune, he let out his breath before commenting. 'We can get her out, but we need to cut off her arm.'

Jaune didn't respond for a second, and neither Nora or Nathan said anything. Jaune let go of Eric's shoulders, falling backwards so that he was sitting on the floor. Shocked from the information, he moved his mouth to try and make words, but no sounds came out. He looked to Pyrrha, who returned his gaze, and nodded at her leader.

'Jaune, it's the best choice,' she reasoned. 'If they don't do it, I lose my life. Losing an arm is much more preferable to losing everything, is it not?'

Realising that she was correct, Jaune lowered his head, and nodded gently.

'Do it,' he whispered gently.

Eric didn't need to know the pair to know that Jaune must have had extremely strong feelings for the girl, and that allowing this to happen must be breaking his heart. Eric looked to Nathan, slowly jerking his head in Pyrrha's direction, and Nathan nodded in understanding. When he looked back, he saw that Jaune was holding Pyrrha's free hand with both of his. Thinking about telling him that she may break his hands when the pain hit, he left them be. The both of them would be more comfortable this way.

Eric tore a piece of cloth from his suit, and let Pyrrha clamp her teeth around it. Nathan stepped past the three of them, spinning his sword so that the blades merged together, creating a large and thick single blade, and raised the weapon over his head. Nathan hesitated, and looked down at the three of them. Eric nodded at his partner, as did Pyrrha.

Getting it over with, Nathan quickly dropped the blade on Pyrrha's arm, between her shoulder and her elbow. The blade cut cleanly through both tissue and bone, and Pyrrha spasmed on the ground, screaming through the gag that Eric had given her.

However, Jaune almost screamed louder than her as her grip on his hands tightened, and light cracking sounds could be heard as she almost broke his hands. As if the damage to his hands wasn't enough, Jaune looked as if he was about to throw up or pass out when he saw Pyrrha's severed arm as his face turned to a pale white.

Pyrrha was also turning the same colour, and once Nathan had stepped out of the way, Eric leant over and started to cauterise the wound with his fire glyphs. Pyrrha started to scream through the gag again, but it was necessary to stop the blood flow and the risk of it getting an infection.

After a few seconds of burning the wound, Eric stopped the flow of aura to his hands, and fell back so that he was sitting. Pyrrha moved her stump of an arm to look at the damage, and was met with her usually pale arm now red and black, burnt at the tip where the rest of her arm had been severed.

'Pyrrha?' Jaune asked, trying to draw her attention to him and not her severed limb. 'Pyrrha, look at me.'

Pyrrha snapped her gaze to him, and all of them could see that tears were filling her acid green eyes. Jaune gently took the piece of cloth out of her mouth, and Pyrrha started to sob. From the looks of his face, Eric could tell that Jaune had never seen Pyrrha cry before, and he had no idea what to do.

Tapping the warriors shoulder, he imitated the action of a hug, by wrapping his arms around an imaginary person when Jaune looked at him. Nodding, Jaune leaned forwards, and copied Eric's motion, wrapping his arms around Pyrrha and placing a hand on the back of her head.

Pyrrha continued to sob into his ear, so Jaune stroked her hair and whispered to her, 'It's ok Pyrrha, its done. Now let's get out of here.'

Pyrrha nodded softly, and Jaune helped her get to her feet. Nora, who had been extremely quiet throughout the entire ordeal rushed forwards to help Jaune carry Pyrrha, but he simply picked her up from the ground bridal style, nodding to Eric that they were ready to go.

Eric turned around and led them all out of the tower as it continued to crumble around them.

* * *

**Lupis**

He gripped both of his swords tightly as the Draak roared at him, wondering why it didn't spew flames across him and the rest of the students that were beside and behind him. Closing its mouth, the grimm stared at him, large red eyes meeting a set of yellow and blue ones.

What happened next, Lupis would never have expected in all his years.

A loud, booming voice filled his head, and he cried out in shock, almost dropping his blades.

_So, you called me with the sphere. I knew that it had been taken, but I didn't know that it would be used so that you could call me here to try and defeat me!_ the voice roared in his mind.

Looking around, Lupis saw that the other students around him had the same look of shock on their faces, meaning that they could hear the voice too. Lupis had never heard or seen a grimm that could talk before, even if it was mental communication. Looking back at the Draak, it had its face extremely close to his, as if waiting for his answer.

'We didn't call you here,' Lupis said to the grimm. 'I don't even know what the sphere is!'

_Oh really?_ the Draak questioned, raising one of its front legs and opening its claws, showing Lupis an orb with a black glow to it that was the size of his head.

'I have never seen that before,' Lupis said truthfully.

_So why is it here in your academy with your own technology around it to summon me here? _The Draak roared in his mind. Raising its head, the Draak looked down at him and bared its teeth, hissing loudly.

Ruby stepped forwards in an attempt to talk to the grimm. 'We didn't call you though, Roman Torchwick and the – '

_Silence girl! _the Draak hissed, darting its head towards Ruby, staring into her eyes. _Speak when you are spoken to, not when you want to!_

Ruby moved back slightly to get away from the Grimm into her sister. Yang had her fists clenched in anger, but was not yet willing to make a move against the beast. The Draak turned its head back to Lupis before speaking again.

_This sphere is only ever used for us grimm to communicate with each other across long distances. They are sacred to us, and I should kill you all where you stand for taking it!_

_But, I will give you a chance to give me a reason as to why I should let you live. I know that you are all students of an academy that hunts my kind, which is why I am cautious as to whether I should attack you._

Lupis tried to think of a good reason as to why the Draak should let them leave, but he actually couldn't. Anything he thought of only benefitted him and the rest of the students and not the Draak. The grimm took his silence as the fact that there was no reason.

_So, you have no reason. I thought not_, the grimm said, rearing its head back and opening its mouth, an orange glow at the back of its throat. _Goodbye, humans._

Lupis spun around and wrapped his whips around two lights that were still standing. Pulling forwards, he did his best to push everyone out of the way as the Draak let loose a torrent of flames, but the students were all being pushed back by Lupis and his whips, causing the fire to miss them all.

Once they were far enough back, Lupis unravelled his whips from the lights and spun around to face the Draak. The grimm was charging towards the group of students, but stopped when a barrage of pink explosions hit the side of its head.

Spinning around and hissing, the Draak hissed at the new threat. Lupis could see Eric and Nathan standing at the entrance of the tower, astounded as to what they were seeing before them. Jaune and Pyrrha were beside them with the same expression, but their third teammate had a grenade launcher out, and was firing grenades at the beast as rapidly as she could.

The Draak shot flames towards the small group, but missed as Eric lifted them all into the air with a well-timed use of a gravity glyph. The purple glyph beneath them shot them into the air, and once they were at a reasonable height, Eric placed a glyph below that so that they were stationary in the air.

Beside Lupis, Ruby and Yang started to fire bullets at the Draak, but the rounds did nothing to the beasts tough hide, either bouncing off or exploding against its black scales.

'Scatter!' Lupis shouted as the Draak turned to face them all, fire spewing from its mouth. The group of students dashed out of the way, and more were making their way over from the landing pads at the cliff where they had pushed the White Fang away.

Lupis ran along the cracked path, trying to keep the Draak's attention off of him so that he could get around behind it to his team. Unfortunately, the Draak saw him and swept its tail towards him. Lupis dropped to the ground and slid under the tail, barely dodging the various spikes that lined the tail.

As he stood, he slashed his swords at the tail, but they both just bounced off of the scales, just like Ruby and Yang's bullets. The tail stopped in its swing, and shot back towards him. Leaping into the air, Lupis placed his feet on the tail, but quickly fell down and wrapped his arms around the tail as it lifted into the air.

Explosions rocked across the beast's body, but none of them did any damage to its tough hide. As the tail swung by, Lupis could see Garris and Yang working together, but still doing nothing against its scales.

The duo were throwing punches at the Draak's legs, putting more power into the hits with the use of their bullets or dust. Garris had the claws on both his gauntlets extended, but they bounced off just like Lupis' blades.

The Draak roared and flapped it wings to rise into the air. Looking down, it breathed fire across the students, some of which were unluckily caught in the inferno, but others were able to dodge the flames. The Draak sprayed the flames side to side at the students, attempting to burn them all.

The tail suddenly flicked violently, and Lupis was flung off. A glyph formed in the air near where he would land, and Lupis bent his legs on impact, taking a second to aim his jump. Springing forwards, Lupis shot towards the Draak's wing, and sliced through the fragile membrane of its wing.

Roaring loudly, the grimm spun around to try and fry Lupis, but he had already landed on its back and was making his way across to its other wing. Leaping from its shoulder, he fell onto the soft membrane of the Draak's wing, and cut deep gouges into the tissue. Unable to stay in the air, the Draak fell to the ground with a thud, and Lupis jumped down quickly, running away from the Draak before it could seek revenge for his attack.

Although it couldn't breathe flames as far as where Lupis was, its tail was long enough, and swung it towards him. Leaping over it, Lupis barely cleared the spikes on the tail, but heard a loud crashing sound at the same time. Looking over as he fell to the ground, he saw that the tail had crashed through the entrance to the tower, cutting a large gouge out of the base of the tower.

As if the explosion hadn't caused enough damage, now with the missing section of the tower, it began to fall forwards towards the all of the students. Rubble started to fall from the tower, crashing into the concrete or bouncing off of the Draak. Students started to look up and when they saw the tower falling to the ground, they began to scream and panic.

'Eric!' Lupis called out, getting the attention of his teammate.

Thankfully, he heard Lupis and looked over to his leader.

'We need to get them out of the way!' Lupis called out.

Eric nodded and closed his eyes to concentrate. The glyphs on his hands became a deep purple, and he wrapped any students that were in danger in a purple glow, pulling them out of the way of the collapsing tower.

The Draak looked up and fired flames at the parts of the tower that was going to fall on it, the heat of the flames melting the tower instantly so that it wouldn't be crushed. As the tower got closer to the ground, the courtyard began to fill up with rubble, making an uneven terrain for the students to walk on, the debris of the tower creating small ditches and hills out of the building.

As the tower collapses, dust rose from the ground and blinded the students until all they could see was the large dust cloud that was created, and the orange glow of the Draak's flames.

* * *

**Ruby**

Once the dust cloud hit, Ruby had to shield her eyes and when she lowered her hand, she couldn't see a thing. The roars of the Draak alerted her to where it was, and she fired her scythe in the direction of the sounds, even though the bullets were simply bouncing off of it.

Ruby made her way across the uneven battlefield, and tried to find Yang in the dust. Instead, she heard someone calling her name, and when she spun around, she saw Blake kneeling beside Weiss under the cover of a nearby building. Ruby ran over, and as she got closer, she could see that Blake had tears in her eyes.

Sliding to a stop, Ruby realise what was happing and knelt beside Weiss as well. She put a hand over Weiss' heart and became scared when she realised that it wasn't beating.

'Weiss?' Ruby asked, pushing gently on the heiress' chest, but received no response. 'Weiss?'

'Ruby, I'm so sorry,' Blake said, tears streaming down her face. 'I couldn't do anything.'

'Why didn't the crystal work?' Ruby asked, beginning to cry. 'I thought it would save her!'

'The crystal could only heal the surface damage,' Blake explained. 'Whatever happened to her was internal, and the crystal couldn't heal that.'

Ruby stopped for a second, thinking. 'What if we got someone who has expertise with healing?'

'What?'

'Think about it. Eric can use healing glyphs to heal himself in battle. Maybe he can fix Weiss?' Ruby wondered hopefully.

Blake thought about it for a moment before replying, 'It's worth a shot. You go find him, I'll stay here with Weiss.

Ruby nodded before standing and rushing away, looking for Eric. As she ran through the dust, lights would flash around her in various colours. She did her best to stay out of the way of the Draak, as from the few students that would be sent flying backwards everytime they went close to it, it was extremely powerful, and would easily crush her if it wanted to.

After several minutes of searching, Ruby saw Eric beside all of team Juniper, keeping them safe with random blasts of elements with his glyphs. Ruby started to take a step forwards, but something wrapped around her waist and pulled her backwards. She was about to turn her head to see what was happening, but when the Draak's tail slammed into the ground in the exact spot that she was just standing in, Ruby realised that someone had just saved her.

Landing on her feet, Ruby's momentum kept her going and she tumbled around backwards, landing on her face. Someone pulled her to her feet, and when she looked up, she saw Lupis standing beside her, blood pouring down his face and across his suit.

'You need to be more careful!' he shouted at her, flicking another whip towards another student and saving them from a burst of flames that would have incinerated them. Once they were clear, he bent over with his hands on his knees, gasping for breath.

'Sorry,' Ruby said, looking back to where Eric was standing. She started to run back over as soon as she spoke, but Lupis grabbed her arm to hold her back.

'If you're going to Eric, ask him to lend you an entire pouch of ice crystals and tell him that I sent you,' Lupis instructed. 'Once you have them, bring them to me, got it?'

Ruby nodded in response, and Lupis let her go. Dashing towards Eric and team Juniper, Ruby kept an eye out for any sudden attacks that would crush her, but luckily, the Draak paid her no attention this time.

Upon reaching Eric, she started to talk to him, but realised that Pyrrha was laid against a rock, cradling her stump of an arm. Jaune had Milo in his hands in its rifle form and was shooting at the Draak with Ren and Nora.

Forgetting about Eric for a second, Ruby leapt over to Pyrrha to see if she was alright.

'I'm fine Ruby,' Pyrrha responded as if knowing what she was about to ask. 'It's not going to kill me, it just really hurts.'

'I'm so sorry Pyrrha,' Ruby said, trying to comfort her friend.

'Yes, well. Unfortunately, it had to be done,' Pyrrha replied. 'You should get back to the battle, I can't really help you.'

Ruby nodded and made her way over to Eric, pulling on his arm to get his attention. He looked at her quickly before turning back to the Draak and firing at him again.

'What is it?' he asked, laying waste upon the Draak with two sets of electrical glyphs.

'Lupis asked you to give him and entire pouch of ice crystals,' Ruby said quickly, relaying Lupis' instructions to the green-haired boy.

Eric put a hand to his belt and pulled off a pouch, handing it to her without looking.

'Thanks,' Ruby said. 'There's something else I need you to do.'

'What is it?' Eric said, without looking at her.

'My friend is dead,' Ruby said, the sentence causing Eric to stop his attack and turn to look at her. 'But I think you can save her.'

'Listen, people that are alive, I can heal. Dead people, not so much,' Eric said to Ruby.

'Can you at least try?' Ruby begged. 'If you heal her, maybe it will help her come back to us.'

Eric took a moment to think.

'Ah, what the hell. Crazier things have happening tonight,' he said, turning to face her. 'Take me to her.'

Ruby nodded and dashed away towards where Weiss and Blake were. The two leapt across the fallen rubble and past other students that were still pointlessly attacking the Draak. Once they reached Weiss' body, Eric slowed down before falling to his knees beside the heiress.

He put a hand over her heart, checked her breathing, and opened her eyes, to see what her body was doing. 'There's a chance I can save her still,' he said.

Ruby was filled with hope, and rushed forwards to give him a quick hug, crushing his back with her bear-like embrace. 'Thank you so much!'

'Yep, let go and I'll live to help her too!' Eric wheezed.

'Right, sorry!' Ruby apologised. 'I need to go! Thank you again!'

Ruby spun on the spot and rushed away, looking around for Lupis. It took her several minutes to find him again, and once she did, she saw that he was now patiently waiting with Garris at his side. He turned to face her as she approached, his hand outstretched.

Ruby placed the pouch in his palm, which he took from her and handed to Garris. 'You know what to do,' he said to his partner.

Garris nodded, looking towards Ruby. 'We're going to need your help though.'

'My help?' Ruby questioned. 'How can I help you?'

'You and I are going to stand on your scythe, and you're going to lift us into the air with your bullets,' Lupis explained to her. 'From there on in, Garris and I can handle the rest.'

Ruby nodded and swung her scythe around so that the barrel was pointing down to the ground. She stepped on the underside of the blade, and Lupis stepped on beside her. He looked over to Garris, and the two nodded to each other.

'Go,' Lupis whispered to Ruby, who fired her scythe and sent them into the air. Ruby continued to fire her scythe as they rose higher and higher into the air. After a few shots, the two were above the dust cloud, and they could see the Draak in the midst of the dust, spinning around and attacking the groups of students that were hidden in the cloud.

'Get its attention!' Lupis shouted at her as he leapt upwards into the air and flicking his whips down to the ground.

Ruby hopped off of her scythe and aimed at the Draak from in the air. Letting loose the rest of the bullets in her clip, the Draak turned to look at her, red eyes glowing in the dust. Raising its head out of the cloud, it opened its mouth, an orange glow forming at the back of its throat.

A white blur shot past Ruby and when she looked up, she saw Lupis lifted Garris into the air with his whips, the both of them wrapped around one of his hands, and in the other was the pouch of crystals. Spinning once, Lupis flicked Garris towards the Draak, and the latter student let go of the whips, plummeting towards the grimms jaw.

Ruby watched in shock as he disappeared in the fiery inferno of the grimms mouth, before the Draak closed his mouth, swallowing what was left of him.

* * *

**Garris**

In reality, Garris had used his phasing semblance to safely fall through the flames, and straight into the Draaks mouth. Only deactivating his semblance once the inferno had stopped, Garris slipped through the Draaks throat, and down into his gut. Digging one of his claws into the side of the grimms throat, Garris came to a stop not too soon, hanging precariously above the burning inferno that was in its stomach.

Opening the pouch of crystals, Garris dropped them into the Draaks stomach, before firing a blast of white dust at the falling crystals, causing them to explode into large columns of ice. Activating his semblance once more, Garris phased through the Draak as the ice began to pierce it from the inside.

Landing on the ground once he landed, Garris looked up at the chaos he had caused as pillars of ice broke through the Draaks hide, piercing it from multiple angles.

_NOOOOOOOO! _it shouted loudly in everybody's minds, only matched by the sound of cracking ice that filled the air. A large shard pierced through its throat, and the beast stopped moving. Slowly, it began to disintegrate into the air, leaving nothing behind but a large cluster of ice which was quickly melting from the heat of the Draaks stomach.

At first, the students were unsure of whether they had imagined what they had just seen, but quickly realised that the Draak was dead, and began to yell victory cries, holding their weapons in the air once more.

Garris whooped loudly and held a fist in the air, his voice drowned out by the hundreds of shouts from everybody else. Not a moment too soon, everyone's voices were drowned out by the sound of the engine of a bulkhead flying over them all, making its way towards the landing platforms. Students looked into the air, wondering who was on the ship, but Garris knew exactly who was on board.

'It's about time you guys got back!' he yelled at the landing bulkhead, even though they couldn't hear him.

Once Ozpin and Glynda had made their way off of the bulkhead, they were greeted with a tide of bloodied, beaten, and tired students, all of whom were watching them as they walked off. Garris could tell from the looks of the professors faces that they were surprised at the sight, but also glad that there were still students standing.

'Welcome home professors!' Lupis called out from amongst the crowd. 'You missed the best party ever!'

'So it seems,' Ozpin replied, eyes roaming across the students. 'Someone will have to help me understand what has happened here. I would like to know what has happened to my school.'

* * *

**The invasion is over, but there are still a few more things that need to be wrapped up. After writing this, I definitely prefer writing combat scenes that don't involve grimm as human/faunus combat is much easier to write. But, I wanted to test it out to see what it was like. Hopefully it was enjoyable.**

**This is one of the final chapters to this story, so there will only be one or two more to go depending on how I write this. However, I've kinda gotten attached to these characters, so I highly doubt that there will not be a second volume for Team LEGN. There are still some stories that need to be told, and I don't particularly feel like rushing through them in one or two chapters.**

**Have a great rest of your week, I won't though, school really sucks y'know.**


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